Monday in Gravesend broke clear again and I found myself used to it. So used to it I will now argue with anyone who says it always rains in England.
We’re off to the south coast today and will be picking up my cousin Gillian’s daughter Claire and baby son Alex as we pass through Heathfield. The East Sussex town is sixty-five kilometers from London and twenty-five from our day’s destination of Eastbourne.
As usual any sort of trip in England takes hours; I plan on twice the time it takes to travel the same distance back home in Canada. Nearing Heathfield we spent a lot time travelling within never ending tight turns amongst dense forest on a single track road. While a beautiful country lane it was clearly identified as a major thoroughfare on our SatNav. We were following the contours of a tight and tiny valley bottom when suddenly with no warning we came across a road gang set up across the road. There was no way around them nor any alternative but to backup the hundred metres around a bend to the last crossroads while praying nobody was barrelling along in our direction.
With no idea how to proceed out came the satellite navigation again, this in spite of Gillian and partner Geoff having travelled the area countless times. The new route only added half an hour to the trip and we were soon at Clarie’s. There are two parallel chalk escarpments in this part of the country known as the North and South Downs. The area between is called the Weald. The prosperous town of Heathfield sits on an ancient track called The Ridgeway which connects the South Downs and the Weald.
Heathfield’s charter was granted by Edward ll in February 1316 and nearby iron ore mining brought prosperity during the 16th and 17th centuries. Prosperity continued with the coming of a railway line in 1880. Today that now abandoned line’s bed is part of England’s National Cycle Network. I’d never heard of Heathfield prior to this visit and I didn’t expect to hear of it again to be honest. It was just another of the countless small towns and villages you pass through on any visit to England. But within two weeks of being back home in Canada I was reading a magazine article which referenced a guy who lived in Heathfield. Disney was right, “it’s a small world after all”.
We stayed at Claire’s long enough to look round the flat and pack up two year old Alex before continuing on to Eastbourne. Happily Claire had a car and Gillian rode with her and Alex allowing us four guys to stretch out a bit, as much as four guys can stretch out in a Vauxhall Astra.
First impressions of Eastbourne were a revelation. Home to near one hundred thousand people the city is thirty kilometers east of the better known resort destination of Brighton. There is a spectacular roadway curving right round the bay just metres from the beach. The other side of the aptly named Grand Parade is packed cheek by jowl with five and six storey hotels all sparkling in the sunshine. Development of this Victorian era seaside resort area began in 1859 and grew from four separate hamlets. The developers wanted to cash in on the newly discovered pleasure of taking the sea air was having on the leisure class.
Celtic peoples had settled the area 2500 years ago but Stone Age artifacts and evidence of ancient flint mines have been found on the nearby Eastbourne Downs. Remains of a Roman bath and a villa have been unearthed close to the centre of the city’s promenade. A few years back the skeletal remains of a thirty year old woman dating to 425 AD were found. Genetic testing identified the young lady as being of sub-Saharan African ancestry.
A document from 963 identifies a settlement here called Burne with a water landing stage and a long since gone stream. Today the source of that stream stills bubbles up, into a small pond watched over by a statue of Neptune. East was added to Burne in the 1200’s to become the village’s name. By the mid 1700’s the well to do were visiting and the destination as a place of relaxation began.
We were soon standing at the centre of it all, the newly rebuilt wooden pier that stretches three hundred metres over the water. The original 1862 pier served tourists faithfully until 2005 when a foolish kid looking for kicks set it alight. It took years to be restored but today you can walk out and take advantage of restaurants, bars, games arcade and the many tourist kiosks selling trinkets, ice cream and candy. We walked out to the end of the pier of course and I was just fine. Fine that is until I glanced down at my feet and caught glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean between the gaps of the wooden deck planking. The water seemed a long way down and I just knew it was deep and cold.