The BBCWeather App was spot on with the forecast yesterday so we found ourselves setting off from Wandsworth in light rain at 8.30am which would have us on target for even more rain by the time we got to Camber Sands around 10.30. Fortuitously for us, but not for the people concerned, we came upon an RTA on the A3 at Tolworth which delayed us by the best part of an hour. That delay coupled with a coffee stop in Maidstone had us arriving at Camber just as I was turning the windscreen wipers off. Only a few hardy souls had made it to the beach in the rain so as the sun came out we had the sea and sand almost to ourselves for an hour - a great welcome to East Sussex!
On to the pretty town of Rye after lunch on a quest to find Terry and Shane Haddon's celebrated fish shop 'Rye Fish Merchants'. Terry is well known in the Wimbledon area for his Friday fish stall and has won a top award in London's Time and Leisure, so well worth hunting out as we were driving through Rye anyway. They were easy to find on the road into Rye and with parking too. We bought a couple of bream and a bag of samphire - stuff of my childhood, collected from the marshes around Southport where I spent my teenage years, delicious eaten like asparagus with a bit of melted butter.
Decisions, decisions, shall we stay and explore Rye or move on to Winchelsea and Hastings? We made the wrong decision. It seems that traffic problems were set to challenge us for the day. It must be awful for those involved in road traffic accidents, I'm very fortunate not to have experienced one or had family or friends involved, however yesterday we were certainly affected by them! Our straightforward journey to Hastings via Winchelsea turned into quite an adventure. We tried taking the coast road only to discover that we were in fact on a Sustrans cycle/footpath and private road - the map said it was a road, it looked to be a great choice, it was just the signage that I found lacking!! Our whistle stop tour is giving me a real yearning to come back and explore the Kent/Sussex area in more detail - the marshes at Rye Harbour are full of wildlife and peaceful tranquility, a great place to walk or cycle but remember to take a pair of binoculars.
Back through Rye and a more northerly route choice which would bring us round into Hastings but missing out the beach at Winchelsea. Well, what a 'battle' we had around Hastings!! Road works galore!! All added to the adventure though and who knows what kind of time delay but we got to enjoy masses of very pretty Sussex countryside on our single track road detours, coupled with lots of other traffic driving the lanes for the first time and not experienced in reversing into passing places!
Our beach tally was limited to 2 by the end of the day but never mind, the original aim of the trip was to get to know the coastal areas of the region and we certainly saw lots of East Sussex yesterday!
As we experienced on Romney Marsh, the wind got up to 12mph late afternoon/early evening but that wonderful BBC Weather app advised us that it would drop by 7.00,which it did, in time to BBQ our fish with a degree of safety. The BBQ then obligingly kept it's heat and warmed us as the August evening chill set in - weird how folk on commercial campsites don't sing around campfires at dusk ..... isn't it???
Note for Molly - we got the tent pitched in 20 minutes, very hard ground for bashing the tent pegs in though, wish you'd been with us, you were really good at that job!
Nick with his first sandcastles of the trip at Camber Sands
Our campsite on a farm at Bexhill. I want that bell tent behind us!
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