12.09.2011 – 12.09.2011  15 °C

What a day! The weather is probably the most extreme I’ve seen in a long time! An ex-hurricane from the US blew onto the British isles last night lashing the country with gale force winds and heavy rain… So my day started interestingly… try driving a little buzz box along windy country roads with a 60mile/ hr wind blowing and driving rain… Mmmm. It’s probably a recipe for an accident (which I thankfully avoided) and arrived in one piece at the White Cliffs of Dover (only about a 20min drive from Canterbury).

The cliffs were obscured by driving rain and really strong wind (it’s that strong today that I was having some issues doing up my jacket!!) so I stopped into the coffee shop to see if I could wait out the worst of the weather. Below me (the café where I’m drinking my coffee) is the port of Dover where the trans-continental shipping lines all pull in for the passenger ferries. Luckily the rain wasn’t heavy enough that I couldn’t see what was happening in the port. It’s incredible, most of the time I was having my cuppa at least 2 ferries were pulled up off loading and on loading cargo and passengers. And the part that is amazing is the turnaround… it seemed like less than half an hour and they have been and gone from the port…. I can’t believe there are that many people and trucks wanting to go to the mainland and they can turn around the boats that quickly! I felt truly sorry for those people catching one of the ferries today, the weather is really abominable and I can imagine that the crossing would be pretty yuk! The person selling sea sick tablets would have been doing a roaring trade today!

Believe it or not the weather cleared a little bit so I decided to go and brave a part of the cliff walk to see some sort of white cliffs. I mean you can’t come to England and not see the cliffs! The walk along the cliffs was very blustery to the point that when I was taking my photos I had to really plant my feet to try and get a semi steady photo! Here’s hoping they aren’t too out of focus!! I hadn’t walked even a couple of hundred meters before the weather started to close back in so I decided to head back to the car and continue my journey onto Brighton, hoping that during the intervening time the weather might clear a little bit more.

I was so lucky, by the time I hit Brighton the clouds had largely rolled away and I was left with the wind still blowing a gale but at least a clear sky. I found my hotel (which is in Hove not Brighton) and spent the remainder of the day walking along the sea side towards Brighton. I love Brighton and Hove! It is so quintessentially Victorian that you can almost imagine ladies in their hoop skirts and boater hats walking along the Promenade holding their parasols! I just love it! I tested out the ocean temp and it was pretty chilly but probably not as cold as I would have expected… If the sun was shining, no wind and the sea a bit calmer I may have even tested out the water….. well I say that now…… probably in all likelihood I would still find the ocean too cold for a swim!

I spent a good 3 maybe even 4 hours just walking along the beach towards the pier of Brighton. And in doing so I probably had the most enjoyable afternoon on the Promenade as I have had for months. I can’t describe how amazing the ocean looked (I would describe it as an angry grey sea), the wind felt (I almost had to bend double to walk into the wind!), the smell of the sea (it has such a strong sea weedy smell), the salt spray in the air (there was a very definite white haze in the air) and the sun shining down (intense and almost a golden colour from all of the salt spray).. Just incredible. On my return journey I stopped in at a little seafood restaurant and had a seafood chowder with crusty bread.. An absolutely heavenly way to end a heavenly afternoon!!