11th December 2015
Brighton Pier and Lotus temptations !
A few days later Janet and I set off down
to Brighton. She had always wanted to
see Brighton Pier, and I had never been down there either, so we set off to
explore despite the weather being a bit wet and gloomy.
Brighton sea front is fairly typical of the
English south coast - or at least as far
as I have always imagined it – with lots of old style hotels and accommodation
along the sea front. Some of the
buildings are really quite impressive in their old world grandeur, and once can
easily imagine them packed with holiday makers in the summer time. Developed
during the Georgian era, its popularity continued through the Victorian era to
modern times, with the West Pier built in 1866 and the Palace Pier in
1899.
The West Pier finally closed in 1975 and
fell into disrepair, and several major sections have since collapsed, while 2
fires in 2003 finally destroyed what remained, leaving just the steel framework
offshore which can be seen today.
The Palace Pier is what is now known as
Brighton Pier, and after parking down near the Brighton “Eye” wheel, we walked
back to the pier to inspect it. Passing
some bike racks where shells of bikes were still locked up (don’t leave your
bike on Brighton waterfront ?!), we walked out onto the pier.
Despite it being a cold, windy, and damp
winter’s day, there were a surprising number of people out there enjoying the
facilities. Basically it is now a
fairground, with 2 or 3 big halls filled with pin ball and other modern
machines, and other rides and dodgem cars and helter skelters all over the
place – A number of them manned and open despite the weather. After wandering out to the end, it was time
for a bite to eat, but the restaurant on the pier seemed very expensive, so we
went back to the pier entrance where there was a much more reasonably priced
After our lunch we returned to the car and
headed back up the road to Surrey before it got too dark (It is dark here now
by about 4 pm !!)
A few days later, Janet had gone up to
London for the day to spend time with some of here old friends from the past,
so I took myself off to Hindhead where I had found a garage that had a few
interesting cars for sale. Unfortunately
most of them were just slightly out of my price-bracket, especially a recently
restored Aston Martin DB4 with a price tag of abut £500,000 !! They also had a couple of rather nice Lotus’
which kept me interested…….. !!
There are lots of things to see and do
around here – Just never enough time to see them all !
Pics are here :- https://picasaweb.google.com/110185357936043625130/0391BrightonAndLotusThings?authkey=Gv1sRgCJmYhuC1jJDxtAE
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