Vole Explosion

Thursday 17^th November 2022

BRIGHTON TO WORTHING

   As forecast, the rain of the past two days has blown through, and I leave the hostel and continue west along the prom in bright sunshine. It’s a bit chilly and the wind is still fairly strong, but otherwise it’s a fine Winter’s day and I’m in a great mood.

   Brighton seafront is transformed in the sunshine and looks wonderful. I recognise The Grand Hotel from Quadrophenia. They have a doorman outside and I wonder how many times a day he has to put up with passing wags shouting ‘BELLBOY!’ at him. Maybe it’s written into his job description.

   Of course, the hotel is also famous for the IRA bomb attack at the Conservative Party conference in 1984.

   I pass by the burned remains of Brighton’s other pier and various other landmarks, before continuing through the wide-open seafront of Hove.

   This town easily wins the award for the most colourful beach huts so far.

   Eventually the fine seafront of Brighton and Hove gives way to the ugly industrial area of Portslade-by-Sea, set along a thin peninsula that encloses a harbour. I walk all the way to the end and stop for a cold drink outside a café.

   Nearby I see shingle being removed again. A bulldozer pushes it into piles that are scooped up by a digger which deposits it into the back of a series of trucks. These then drive away with it. Apparently, shingle is the naughtiest of all the stones and it simply won’t stay where it’s supposed to. It spends most of the year tearing around all over the coast and getting into scrapes so, at the end of the season, it all has to be scooped up and taken back to where it should be. Or something like that.

   After my rest, I head north across the swing bridges at the harbour mouth to leave the peninsula and walk back on the ‘mainland’ at Southwick. From here I head west again through more industrial area and past an old lighthouse and lifeboat station.

   After the industrial ugliness, it’s nice to turn a corner and arrive at the attractive town centre of Shoreham. Quite a few people are out and about enjoying the sunshine and the atmosphere here is good. I decide to take a brief cultural detour by catching a bus to the ruins of Bramber Castle a little way inland. While waiting for the bus I hear a loud bang and turn to see that one of the shingle-wrangling trucks has driven into the back of a small car, causing considerable damage. Fortunately nobody is hurt.

   On the bus journey, I see Lancing College a short distance away. This is another posh school and looks even more spectacular than Roedean. It’s hard not to make the obvious Hogwarts comparison.

   There isn’t much left to see of Bramber Castle, but it has an interesting story connected to the Norman Conquest, and I get to tick off another English Heritage property.

   I buy an ice cream from a van in the carpark – the vendor is remarkably cheerful considering it’s probably the first ice cream he’s sold since August – and then I’m just in time to catch the bus back to Shoreham, where the pub is now open.

   There are loads more pubs here but they’re not technically on my route, so I’m not obliged to drink in them according to the venerable rules of coastal pub-crawling. Instead, I cross the River Adur via a footbridge to another long peninsula called Shoreham beach. There is another pub just over the bridge, and this one does require a visit.

   The Adur estuary, over which I’ve just crossed, is owned and managed by the RSPB, but it isn’t really a reserve you can visit except to observe from the bridges or waterside. I can’t see any birds here anyway.

   I walk east along the northern edge of Shoreham Beach until I reach the end of the peninsula just across the harbour mouth from the area where I stopped at the café this morning. Shoreham Beach consists of suburban houses in the middle with waterfront apartments around the edge. There are the usual ‘Private’, ‘Keep Out’, ‘Residents Only’ signs that these new-build waterfront paths always tend to have, but I find they can safely be ignored. The residents don’t seem to care who is walking past, as long as you’re behaving yourself.

   I round the eastern end of the peninsula and walk past the 19^th century remains of Shoreham Fort. It is fenced off due to more shingle-wrangling operations nearby.

   I then head west again for a long, straight walk facing the sun. The path along here is an easy boardwalk across the shingle, with the sea on my left and some nice beachfront houses on my right.

   Further west the route continues past a long, landlocked lagoon that is managed as a nature reserve. More nice houses on the opposite bank of the lagoon.

   I pass through Lancing and then into Worthing. The sun has gone down by now and the fishing boats hauled out on the shingle create an atmospheric view against the darkening sky.

   At the eastern edge of Worthing I come across a memorial to a baby elephant, inevitably named Jumbo, that washed up alive on the beach here in 1926. Nobody knows where it came from or what it was doing in the sea. This has to be the strangest memorial I’ve seen since Ho Chi Minh’s gap year back in Newhaven.

   Worthing looks really nice from what I can see of it – I’ll take a better look tomorrow. I go for a quick walk up the pier. There are lots of guys night fishing and a few people out for a stroll.

   I check into the nearby Travelodge and I’m surprised to get another single bed. I’ve stayed in loads of Travelodges before and I’ve always had a double bed. I didn’t know they even had single beds. Just when you think you know everything about the Travelodge, they spring a surprise on you!

   I go out again and have a couple of drinks in seafront bars I passed earlier, then I decide on fish and chips for dinner – not sure how I’ve gone this far into the week without having fish and chips yet. Instead of a takeaway I decide to treat myself at the slightly more upmarket Arcades Fish Restaurant. The food is wonderful and the service very friendly. In a hair salon across the way a young woman is having a late-nite scalp and shoulder massage. I feel like I’m watching an ASMR video while I eat, and I’m getting tingles. It must be time to sleep.

14.4 miles; 23.1 km; 9.5 hours

Travelodge, Worthing (£42)