Littlehampton to Brighton – 18th July 2018

The first trip

OS Landrangers 197 and 198

30 miles

11:45 Victoria Station and I’m setting off to Littlehampton with the bike propped up in the space next to the only toilet on the train. It’s a feature of most modern trains that the bike spaces are located immediately adjacent to the toilets with the automatic sliding doors that very few people, including me, understand how to use. I’m sitting on one of the three drop down seats adjacent to the WC which is emitting a faint whiff of urine and trying to remember what the purpose of the journey is. Something about having a cycle from Littlehampton to Brighton and keeping as close to the coast as possible was one, but the other…?

It’s later than I’d expected due to chronic traffic around Westminster and I have missed the target train so I’m not going to be heading out on the ride till at least 1pm, but hey, there’s no rush. It’s past mid-summer but the days are still long and today is hot, though not as staggeringly hot as recent weeks, and because the days are long I don’t care much about when I’ll eventually get to Brighton.

Approaching Brighton from the north, the train snakes to the right, half a mile or so before the main station, and sets off to the west and through the various communities hemmed between the south Downs and the coast. I won’t list them but one or two (such as the almost rural French style white buildings at Portslade) have interesting looking stations, though little else that captures the imagination. This is largely because the railway tends to pass the back ends of the towns rather than the potentially more interesting coastal sides to the south.

Eventually the train winds round to the left in a big arc that is bound by the river Arun on the right (with Arundel a couple of miles to the north) and a pretty meadow leading up to a new and relatively attractive housing estate on the left. A small group of people are in one of the fields flying model planes and some cows munch away in the next. The train pulls into the terminus at Littlehampton and within a minute or so I’m by the side of the river and cycling south to the front and past the various blocks of flats that have sprung up over the last twenty or so years and which have a certain appeal. Then I remember. Is this somewhere I could live? Well, it’s a good start, but what else is out there, to the east? Let’s see…

Quayside Littlehampton

At the front, where the groynes begin, and then march east in an almost unbroken sequence to the Thames estuary, I pause, buy a cup of tea and take in the view. It’s a weekday and just before most of the schools have broken up but it’s still busy and a refreshingly diverse mix of people and ages are strolling along and fending off gulls when chips and ice-creams are over exposed. The beach even has evidence of sand. It’s not the sort of pebble desert that other places on the south-coast can be. A small fun fair near the entrance to the river and a few cafés and knickknack shops on the front and a large greensward behind with the town set back to the north. It’s alright. It’s alright but is it really going to be the answer? I’m thinking maybe not.

Littlehampton to the Rustington Belt

On the bike and heading out of town along the front it’s a sparse view. Not unpleasant but not saying very much to me and the shingle increasingly dominating the beaches. Before you realise it, because why should you, you’re in, or at, Rustington. A slight inland detour but shortly back to the front and cycling along a path across a wide strip of grass with housing to the left and low dunes hugging the beach to the right. I reach a small car park, where beyond there is a gap in the dunes and low scrub leading to the beach. I dismount, curious to see what the beach looks like at this point. Standing aimlessly, and dithering over whether to lock up the bike (a simple but tedious task that I try and avoid at all costs, not least because the key will inevitably be in a pocket of a light jacket that has become entangled in the spare tyre and stuffed tightly into the pannier), or just hoick it up the dusty path, a voice calls out from behind me. I turn and see a very healthy-looking woman, probably in her early 60’s and clearly just off the beach. “I’m leaving now if you’d like to lock your up bike here?” It’s a kind and unexpected gesture but I mumble something to the effect that it’s “okay” and “thanks.” But I’m nevertheless troubled by something and as she’s turning away I ask her rather randomly whether it’s possible to continue cycling along the coastal path and if so, for how long?

The woman is totally engaged on this matter. What was troubling me, nagging at my confidence, was that although the phone map seemed to show a continuous path to the east, some of the signage I’d noticed along this stretch seemed to indicate (let’s be clear – “warned” is a better term) that this was somehow private land and that whoever owned it was giving us mere mortals reluctant permission to tread upon their hallowed turf and tarmac. It wasn’t clear what sort of penalty may apply, but I had a feeling that down the line I was, at the very least, going to get a jolly good telling off from someone in tweed.

“Oh yes you can,” she confirmed. “All the way through but they don’t like it of course.” Hmm! I quizzed her on the specifics. “The people in the posh houses further on into the estate. Just ignore them. I do.” Given that she herself struck me as being quite posh I wasn’t entirely sure what “posh” meant in her eyes but she was genuinely helpful and likeable.

The houses had increasingly become larger and more imposing and it was dawning on me that the whole area was some sort of private estate, almost certainly having emerged over the years on the land of a previous country estate. Land that may have been annexed by the Normans, a priory, or after Henry burned down the monasteries and farmed out the fields to his mates (HLG). Now in the hands of the proletariat?

I thanked her and started to push the bike further up the track. “Oh, and by the way,” she added as she liberated her bike from some metal railings, “don’t be intimidated by the warning signs. Just keep going.” I thanked her again, but she once more emphasised, as if it were a message more appropriate for Jason and his Argonauts, not to be put off by the signs and barrier gates.

After a quick look at the beach, with its prettily painted huts and pleasant pebbles (it was evident by the few but dazzlingly healthy older people who were sunbathing between the dunes that this probably was quite an exclusive spot), I cycled on along the grassy path with the sirens message ringing in my head. Determined, and with renewed confidence, I was going to plough on. I was not going to turn back.

Pleasant groynes and pebbles at Rustington

I turned back about a mile further on. I’d passed through an area where there were low trees and shrubs hiding the beach from view on one side and a long, high redbrick wall that looked quite ancient on the other. I figured this wall had maybe once been a feature of the country estate. Behind it, rising higher and higher as the route progressed, projected the upper stories of houses that stood in their own extensive grounds. Some of them would not have been out of place on The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead. I was now feeling uncomfortable and a bit out of place. At the eastern end there was a gate that looked a bit of a challenge and a couple of older women with large dogs who had the bearing of uninhibited “shouters” about them (the women, not the dogs). Despite the clear message from my mentor back at the beach huts, I bottled the barrier and slowly retraced my wheels to a gap in the walled fortifications and a path leading towards a road within the estate.

The Gate Too Far 2 No Parasan

I proceeded up the path, trying desperately to appear invisible and snatching glimpses to the left and right trying to identify any prying CCTV. I reached the road and within a few minutes was back at the barrier, but on the other side. The path had clearly run out on the beach at this point but a bit further back up the lane there was road leading to another part of the estate with a barrier gate. “Don’t be intimidated by the warning signs. Just keep going,” danced around in my mind. I was not going to be intimidated and as the peddles started to turn again and the bike set off towards the half-opened gate my eyes alighted on a white sign with black writing and red symbols. “Private Road – No Entry – No Public Right of Way.” In other words – bugger off! Why didn’t it just say that?

What a wimp. Maybe some sort of inferiority complex was creeping in, but whatever it was it was enough to send me further inland and eventually through some streets that led me back to the beach at Angmering. A nice spot with a café but no further progress was going to be possible along the beach so back inland and along a road called the South Strand and then it all went a bit wrong.

I can’t recall exactly which streets I took after this, and may well have missed a more coastal opportunity, but what with the intimidating signage, the useless visuals that the phone map was giving me and a rattled self-belief, I began winding further inland. At one point I followed a track to a field and then across the field on a footpath, which at the end gave two options, both of which appeared to lead nowhere of obvious use, and so turned back and then onto more roads that were not only taking me north and away from the coast, but to my horror back west.

This was still the private estate, judging by the endless warning signs and gated roads, but whereas some of the properties by the sea were big, now I was entering the world of enormous. Not all, by any means, but quite a few which were on a scale that I wasn’t quite sure I was equipped to understand. Not Virginia Water or Runnymede of course, but certainly higher up the aspirational scale. Architecturally many of the buildings reached back to the 1930’s. Large, and no doubt built for the local captains of industry and commerce in a world before television, where space alone and a transistor radio allowed a necessary detachment from the nearby community hubs. But there was something else going on here now. Those 1930’s homes, the sort you can find in the suburbs of all towns and cities…well some of them were now going through a transformation, a contemporary make-over. You can see this process almost everywhere now. It’s a process that is largely under the radar. Unlike the huge new apartments going up in the cities, or the new estates emerging on the fringes that strike you immediately as tangible signs of change, what’s happening to the houses in these 1920’s and 30’s enclaves is a slow metamorphosis that most of us won’t even know has happened. It’s piecemeal. Someone dies, or just moves on, and the home that’s been in the family, maybe for several generations, passes to a new clan. The new clans, it seems, have more dosh than the last lot. They don’t hold the same historical associations. Now they look at the buildings and the sites (or garden for the more traditional amongst us) and reappraise the possibilities. Maybe that 1970’s extensions looking a bit jaded, or just too damn small. No problem, it can be doubled in size. Actually, those City bonuses coming through in the Autumn?

Hey, why tinker? Why not just knock it down and start again? New visions, new scales, new heights, new wiring (maybe not even required), new burners and enough hardscape to take the weight of several new and vintage motors. John….we’re not just dancing here, we’re creating new nirvana’s that are literally burying the jaded old Shangri-la’s.

I don’t know how long this process is going to take? Maybe decades, but I am sure that if the money still flows, and if we could revisit these places in a hundred years from now, the only 20’s or 30’s buildings still in these districts will be solitary mock Tudor affairs, set in a well-manicured public space gardens, with a café in the last 1970’s extension that still keeps out the rain, and open to the public Wednesday’s to Sunday’s. Possibly listed too. Archaeologists who come along a thousand years from now and start sifting through the remains (assuming current predictions – by then located about a mile out to sea and covered in silt) will no doubt conclude that there was an early 20^th century middle to high status culture that built with brick, wood and Bakelite, but which in the 21^st century, and through some economic wizardry that magicked money out of nowhere, was replaced by an uber status class, that with the new magic wealth and the power of more advanced technology, kicked the rustic, and possibly dowdy, quite literally into the long-grass (that also coincidentally disappeared around the same time under a lava flow of tarmac and concrete drives). I don’t know who, or what sort of people live (or maybe don’t) in these splendid isolation’s but something doesn’t feel quite right. The phrase “An Englishman’s home is his Castle,” is slightly tongue in cheek I suspect, though clearly many people do take it seriously regardless of the size or location of the home in question. And who am I to judge? Here though they seemed to be taking it literally, though the new emerging style is possibly more 21^st Century Chateau, or maybe chic Russian mafia bunker, than the traditional Norman or Tudor model.

Well, whatever this social commentary may or may not imply or mean (and I will try and stay clear of it unless seriously provoked), I didn’t have to worry about it. As I headed further west and north I knew for certain that even if I was tempted (and I wasn’t), the means and wherewithal were seriously lacking.

Nothing of obvious note

After some meandering west, and then north, I cross the railway at Angmering, then along a slightly nasty section of the A259 (a road that will feature again), and then south again to Goring-on-Sea and I think missing out Ferring – although I could be wrong on this. One way or other I was now back on the coastal road heading east with the gentle prevailing wind. Before long Worthing emerges. Time to take a coffee break. I don’t know Worthing, or if I do it doesn’t register on this occasion. There’s a pier and a few standard seafront things which provide chips and ice-cream but nothing really stands out. I’m a bit disappointed but just before the town peters out there’s a café that looks a bit different. The Coast Café des Artistes stands alone, but also stands out. On a broiling day sitting outside and looking out to sea, you appreciate that with a little bit of thought, a bit of panache perhaps, and a bit of clever design, the quality of life can genuinely be enhanced (if you can recover from the slightly manic scrum when placing your order at the till).

Water features – Lancing to Portslade

Refreshed and onward. Brighton is visible now but there’s still some way to go. A good bike lane on the front, between the sea and the A259 gets you to Lancing in quick time. One thing the Coast Café des Artistes that hadn’t provided was a decent wodge of grease, bread and tomato sauce that I felt my body needed to continue the journey. Fortunately, at Lancing, I fell across an open window in an old building advertising a comprehensive range of lard-based products. In competition, and in what seemed to be a revamped pavilion of some sort, was what looked like a very fancy restaurant but I couldn’t be lured (time, money stuff). Not exactly fast food, but eventually my number was called and the huge sausage roll arrived and then disappeared in seconds. Looking directly out to the horizon the new industry of the sea stands in regimented lines and stretches for what looks like miles. I’d passed a point a short while earlier where the power generated by the wind farm is channelled to the land. As I ate I counted the structures. It was hazy but I settled on a final figure of 127 slim symbols of hope. Sadly very few seemed to be turning. Maybe, like Staines, the town could look at a re-branding exercise. Maybe a change of name to reflect the new. How about Lancing-at-Windfarms? It was time to stop daydreaming and for this Don Quixote to get back on the bike and cycle down the last section. Sadly, there would be no modern-day Sancho Panza to keep me grounded, and remind me I’m only mortal too.

And so, shortly after the cholesterol bomb, and at a point almost equidistant between Lancing and the outskirts of Shoreham-by-Sea, an unexpected feature begins to appear on the landward side of the sea wall. A long, but not very wide expanse of what seemed to be shallow water with reed beds and sandy dunes to the south, and lined on the north by a string of modest looking homes, each with the back garden abutting the water and many with small boats either resting on the lawns or tied to stakes set into the mud or sand below. This was so unusual I stop to take in the vista, the bird life, and even read what is quite a lengthy information board that explains that the feature is a shallow saline lagoon formed by sediments deposited by the River Adur. I could go on but figure that if the reader hasn’t already fallen asleep, or has skipped onto another site, or even both, then any additional trivia about the saline lagoon could be the proverbial straw or reed, but just for the record it’s called The Widewater, which if it isn’t already, ought to be the title of a Paul Weller song.

Oh my God, it was suddenly 4:35 and although Brighton looked in touching distance I had a memory of cycling some of the next bit a few years back and knew that there were still some good miles to go before I’d get some Brighton Rock. Pounding on, and eventually I’m tackling the almost straight Old Fort Road. A largely residential area with a wide range of types, styles and sizes, there’s almost something of a Florida Keys feel to the place. Houses are evenly spaced, as if this was a highly planned location, and those to the coastal side of the road will have exceptional sea views. At one point, through some marginal vegetation, there is a path between the houses that leads to the beach. There’s another information board, next to a bus stop, and where someone has dumped an old tyre. It tells you what you might be able to see. All pretty standard stuff though I don’t recognise, or even believe, that there can be such a thing as a Wall Lizard, until some days later, in the spirit of investigation, I looked it up and find that indeed there is a European Wall Lizard and that some have established roots in the south of England. As a voracious lizard watcher (always on the “what I must see?” list when abroad or just messing around on a common), this is big news, and indeed they are bigger than our indigenous specie. Sadly there wasn’t time to hang around and meet a few of the guys so it was back to Old Fort Road and east again to the tip of this landmass where err….an old fort stood! Shoreham Redoubt no less. There will be one or two more Redoubts en-route around the coast, and as alluring as the word is, there wasn’t going to be enough time to stop and inspect.

And so, after inadvertently cycling into the Adur Sailing Club, and the consequential dirty looks received, I turned tail and now found myself cycling along the river side through Sussex Wharf, and once again heading west. Properties here were new, and being new and shore-side, inevitably four or five storey apartments, each with a balcony and a view of the Adur and Shoreham to the north. Quite pleasant as these sorts of developments go and just a little bit of me wondered about the possibility. What looked like a relatively new footbridge took me over the river, with views to the east and west, and into Shoreham. A busy town which looks like it may have a “scene” of some sort, it’s river front high street is more old than new. On the surface it has some appeal but with the shingle beach out of sight and beyond the houses on the spit to the south it misses the coastal feel I’m thinking about.

The last leg (s)

Onward on the A259 (you can’t escape it here) and to the right, on the eastern side of the River Adur drain is the industrial area, based around quays, warehouses and boat yards, and where a few cargo ships are lurking. Some are being loaded with the products of the hinterland, which in this area, and a lot of others along the south coast, is sand and gravel. Timber is also piled high in places and some of the boat yards look like they may be operational. Climbing out of Shoreham and then into Portslade, where the predominant housing type seems to be almost entirely Council, the road is covered in a thin veneer of cement dust and when looking more closely, the same material colonises walls, lampposts, roofs, footpaths and even the verges where grass improbably sprouts. It’s not that bad in truth but it does mark out that the area is industrial and still active.

Shortly the road drops down and starts transitioning between Portslade and Hove where there is a sharp contrast between the working harbour and the Western lawns and boating ponds.

There’s not a lot to say about Brighton and Hove beach that most people don’t know already. It’s monumental. With the largely Victorian and Edwardian backdrop the shingle piles up in terraces from the point where the shifting land plunges into the sea. Like a Bronze Age hill fort, a bastion. I lock up the bike about a mile short of the east pier, trudge across the shingle and finding a spot that looks relatively flat and less intimidating than other parts. I put down the pannier, and a thin tartan travel rug designed for such occasions, and then lay down hoping for forty winks. Twenty minutes later I’ve given up the fight. Comfort is an impossibility here. There’s a comedian from Croydon called Alistair Williams who tells a neat joke about Brighton beach. A French family arrive from London on the train. On the walk down, they buy buckets and spades. When they eventually reach the front, the son, who has in his excitement run on ahead, turns to his dad aghast and says “papa ou est la plage?” He then follows up with a family from Manchester in the same position. A very different response and possibly funnier.

No rest till the pier.

It’s a brutal beach. I cycle the last mile or so along the super bike route that flanks the road and the wide greens which divide the front from the town and before heading home drop down to the beach just before the pier. Cafes, bars and restaurants. It’s still early but already buzzing. There’s a stall selling seafood and I buy a cola and a punnet of prawns. I find a table a few yards from my bike and put down the punnet and drink. I sit down but immediately decide to bring the bike closer (this is Brighton, not Rustington). As I walk towards the bike a moment of intense panic sets in and instinctively turning around a gull has already landed on the table. I run back shouting and waving my hands and (probably embarrassingly so) making sufficient impact to discourage the bird on its mission. Now, clutching the prawns, I return to the bike and manoeuvre it back to the table. I’m now back in charge of the situation, despite the continued interest of the gull and its mates. And relax. The cola is cold and hits the spot. The prawns are good too and top up body salt. Reflecting on the day I considered what I’d learned. Littlehampton appealed. Several plus factors and a sense of diversity, although being so far west could create some unintended fractures with family and friends. Worthing was quickly discounted. Despite the arty café it appeared to lack cultural dynamism. The various features that made up Lancing to Portslade, with the hub at Shoreham, held some appeal but maybe not enough, and the sea at Shoreham was too far from the town. And Brighton and Hove? Well without doubt it’s unique and bubbles with life. The Jam played their last Beat Surrender here so many years ago and despite this, the Lanes, the youth, the playfulness and diversity of the town, in many ways being a little Camden on the coast, is precisely what I want to avoid. There’s a lot more to see and maybe the place for me is further east?

Winding up the day I peddle up to the East Pier and then through the Lanes and back to the station. On the way I’m passed by hundreds of people, dressed casually and heading for the beach after work or maybe college. And why not. What a great way to end a long hot day if you’ve been slogging all through it. Twenty years or so ago I visited my brother for a couple of days when he was young and starting out in the working world and living in a squat in Brighton. After an interesting weekend, and with a day off from work for me on the Monday, I put off returning to London and went to the beach instead. It was a late September, or maybe even an early October day, but the weather was still holding out. I paid for a deck chair and soon started dropping off. As the sun warmed through, and with the sound of sea churning shingle, I slowly forgot my own worries and considered that if at exactly that moment I didn’t wake up again it would have been precisely the most perfect way to go. It wasn’t in any sense a negative thought.

At the station I’d missed the 5:15 by some margin, but why should I care? More annoyingly I managed to miss a later London train mainly because of the perplexing array of ticket options at the machine. When I eventually worked out that it was going to be cheaper to buy a day return (it was now past 7pm), than a single ticket, the train was leaving, but hey I’d saved a few quid and if I did get to London, and suddenly had a burning desire to spend the night back in Brighton, I could take in a West End show and then train back afterwards to find a “soft spot” on the beach and with a view of the stars. But then again, such a thing, as I already knew, probably didn’t exist.

Pier to Pier – A Coastal Caper (with occasional calamities)

So, here’s the deal. You can either spend the next twenty minutes reading the nonsense below (which gives some context, but in truth is just an exercise in wordplay), or skip straight to the individual accounts of the train and bike trips I took to discover and rediscover the Kent and Sussex coast. As at 2023 there is still one small section, Littlehampton to the Hampshire border, to be completed. Covid and various other reasons (excuses, excuses), keep pushing that back, but 2024 – maybe. Read on, skip to menu or exit now. You’re call.

London. 2018. Belting and melting through July. I’ve lived in and around London for the majority of my sixty years and until recently couldn’t see a time in the future when I would live anywhere else. However, in 2017, some dynamics – not catastrophic – entered the game and changed the position. Looking ahead and by the end of 2019 it was very possible that I would need to vacate the smoke to help bridge some gaps.

A lot of things to consider then. A life changing decision. Perhaps? The money’s on somewhere on the south coast. Kent or maybe Sussex. Leaving aside a detailed and unnecessary list some factors to consider include family, friends, cost, transport links and frankly the weather. Essentials though, and in no particular order:

A kitchen with sufficient work surface that when you toast some muffins and make a cup of tea it doesn’t look like a bomb has gone off
At least two nearby pubs to create the illusion that you don’t go drinking every night (I don’t by the way although denial can come in many forms)
A minimum of one Indian Takeaway within staggering distance or at a push moped delivery (no other fast food options necessary)
A venue within bus, train or taxi distance which is able to attract half decent tribute bands and rising sub-culture
A modest garden, south facing and with a degree of privacy

So how do you go about this without spending the next six months watching repeats of “Escape to the Country,” or “Homes Under the Hammer?” Do you just go onto a website and randomly study property types and price range searches on Yaboo, Plastic Zoos or Turtle Shells in each town and community between Portsmouth and Erith in the hope that the pretty little white painted house or bungalow, with a sea view to the south and the Downs in the north, and with the wisteria climbing up the side wall, will magically arrive on your screen? Well yes you could, and maybe that’s all I should do.

But is it really that straight forward? It feels just a bit one dimensional. That dream home may well be about to come up; somewhere. I may have been to that somewhere before and have a reasonably good idea whether or not to follow it up. But if I haven’t, or I have, but it was so long ago, or I was so drunk that any memory of the place has faded away like an old photo left in a frame on a sunny window ledge for too many years – what then? Even if I do think I know that somewhere from a relatively recent visit, I’ve seen with my own eyes how quickly things are changing? Not just in London or the other big cities. It’s pretty much everywhere. Go to Portsmouth and see what’s happened to the town centre in the last few years. There’s not a jolly Jack Tar in sight and the shopping centre near the docks has more exclusive outlets than Regents Street. Even small towns and villages are, willingly or not, liberating land round their edges for housing to meet targets (or line pockets).

So, what other strategies could I deploy?

Word of mouth is certainly helpful but on it’s own has only a limited value.

I could of course drive my old banger out of London once a week (requiring a minimum of one hour to get to any part of the M25), then take one of the main roads, you know the M20 or M23 or even the M3. They work don’t they – mainly? Or, and blimey I nearly forgot,the A3, A24, A22 and A21 (and others in-between). Honestly, I don’t know what people in the North are on about when they complain about not being connected (trains excepted). I mean seriously, apart from some nice views, and villages that have yet to benefit from a by-pass, these classic coaching routes that are the veins and arteries of the south-east, are nothing short of being errrr….well coaching roads! Yes, so no, driving is not a realistic option. I don’t enjoy driving that much and really don’t want to spend long days (and nights) at the wheel just getting to and from a place where I’d be spending another couple of hours weaving up and down avenues and cul de sacs in the search for my ideal home and heating up the planet in the process.

Well – there is an alternative of course, and one that any sane person with a PC, tablet or android would undoubtedly use in these times. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about? That street view tool that allows you a virtual drive down every road, close, and some by-ways in the country and that takes the pain and cost out of motoring. I’ll confess it’s useful but it’s not reality (or maybe it is but I just haven’t caught up yet).

Then there’s the third, fourth or fifth way. Not quite each and every by-way, but a method that combines two passions. Right, let’s just stop romanticising this. I like things to do with trains. I can’t explain it and will make no attempt or waste any effort in doing so. It’s just a thing going back at least 50 years and has nothing to do with Thomas the Tank Engine. The age of steam was dying when I was small and despite rummaging through the remains of the mental filling system I’ve yet to discover a memory in which a steam train featured. It’s possible that living in the southern region area, where electricity had been the predominant method of power generation for a long time already, made that possibility remote in the first place, but certainly on cold, crisp winter nights I could hear the hypnotic rhythms of the tracks a mile or so away, and see the night illuminate whenever, and whatever that reaction is, when the sliding shoe on the train and the third rail interact to create a mini flash of lightning in the suburban skies.

So that’s the supposedly romantic background, but to be clear, it’s not a passion. I stopped reading railway magazines around the same time I started reading NME and Sounds, but somehow I still know enough to tell a class 42 from a class 33 and be a little bit aroused (in a completely non-Benny Hill sort of way) whenever there’s a programme on the TV featuring trains. By the way, did you see the loco they used at the start of the Bodyguard? Seriously BBC – try harder.

And then add a bike. Like a simple recipe, mix the cycling with the reach of the railways and you have a relatively cheap combination that allows significantly more flexibility and should get you much closer to the action.

On the 18^th July 2018, and on a whim, my bike and I took a train from Victoria Station and went to Littlehampton in West Sussex, primarily to re-acquaint myself with the town where I have been to on and off a few times in the last 10 years, and then for the hell of it, and because there was a warm prevailing wind, cycle the coast to Brighton. It was a glorious day.

At some point on the journey, probably sitting on a bench looking out across the Channel and eating a corn beef and pickle sandwich, it occurred to me that if I really wanted to find out if this relocation thing was going to work out, and not be the most disastrous decision I’ve ever taken, bit by bit I could extend this approach over the rest of what remained of the summer and scout out the whole of the Kent and Sussex coastline.

And that’s what I proceeded to do over the coming weeks and into the early autumn of 2018. Checking weather predictions (I’m so fair weather it’s embarrassing really), mapping a route, booking a ticket and then taking the plunge with a heavily laden pannier, some snacks and trusty bike. Because you can’t anticipate the audience (well, if I was being entirely realistic perhaps I should acknowledge now that there won’t be an audience) I may get a bit more specific on technical or factual information in due course (e.g. type of bike for instance, or subtle sandwich variations) recognising that for some this a necessary hook.

I am absolutely certain that many, far more intrepid cyclists, will have done this project over the years, and probably as long ago as the invention of the bike. I’m also certain that many will have done it a lot quicker, and some may even have done it in a day. To be a perfectionist someone with a more clinical approach might say that if you are going to embrace the full experience you should start at the tidal high point of the Thames at Teddington Lock. And I agree! But a pragmatic approach also needed to be considered. To be clear I live in London and spend a lot of free time cycling all over town. I’ve probably cycled the south bank of the river from Teddington Lock to Woolwich so many times over the last two decades that whole new communities have subsequently risen out of the concrete and older communities and industries disappeared beneath the new foundations. So instead, the western limit of the Thames element starts at Woolwich (south-east London) at the Woolwich ferry, although confusingly perhaps the first account starts in Littlehampton (keeping up?).

Again, the purest might also suggest that if you are really going to do the full coastal cycle (or indeed walking) gig, whether for charity, self interest or just plain stupidity, the tidal element should be adhered to rigorously and therefore each creek, stream and river should be navigated to the full tidal extent possible. Yeah, right! Where this was the only option it happened, but honestly, I found out quite quickly that taking this approach usually ended in trouble and so if a road or footbridge presented itself offering the chance to cross whatever the water feature was, I took it.

Another minor detail that actually really mattered was the use of maps. The first two or three expeditions relied on mobile phone technology and on-line maps. Normally I would never have relied on this approach but I figured that simply by coast hugging it would be relatively straight forward when getting my bearings and that the phone would do when in doubt. I quickly realised that in fact what you glean from this approach is always limiting and can lead to unnecessary problems. It’s clever, but it’s too one dimensional, lacks key information and as soon as you zoom away from the point you’re at you lose the bigger picture. I’ll clarify that last bit. In fact you do get a much bigger picture, but it’s either the whole of the south of England or it’s just the five or six square inches that fits on your screen (which in turn is either blinding you with reflected sunlight, or to avoid this, is angled in such a way that it’s impossible to see much more than a hazy smudge). So, after the first couple of adventures, if I didn’t have one for the area already, I invested in a number of Ordinance Survey Landranger maps and refer to these in the narrative, either when they were game changing, or when they too failed the on the ground test.

Based on observations and random thinking, and using cutting edge cartographic techniques, underwhelming digital (and sometimes 35mm) photographs, sketches (if you’re really luck) and pinched knowledge, experience this unique and sometimes painful tour of our south-east coast at your leisure (or preferably not at all), and before we severe our historic ties and slip away from the continent in a just few months from now.

The trip between Littlehampton and Brighton is the first account and unless I change my mind, will publish in the next few days. I’ll be blunt, you might find it a bit bland. Nothing much happened as I recall, but then this wasn’t ever going to be an Indiana Jones adventure or the Iliad.

Lastly, the various journeys that I will endeavour to post on, whenever I’m satisfied I’ve done the accounts justice, were not sequential in a geographic sense. So it’s not a chronological narrative of the coast between the Thames Estuary and West Sussex. I had a little debate with myself whether to post the accounts in a way that linked each stretch through a logical narrative. In the end, rightly or wrongly, I decided to post the accounts in date order. To that end one day you’ll find me peddling merrily through brash south coast resorts, and the next flogging the proverbial dead bike across muddy tidal flats between industrial estates and power stations and with a view of Essex to the north.

Will I achieve my goals? Let’s find out. Oooohh…and if I die between now and the Spring, then the answer is almost certainly no.

List of terms, acronyms and other abbreviations that I’ll almost certainly forget to use:

HLG – Historical Land Grab. Refers to a part of the coast not currently available for public access, where at some point in history, a person or organisation purchased the land for residential, hunting or ecclesiastical use, and therefore by implication self-interested desire. An Englishman’s home is his castle – that’s a shame but come the revolution………

ANOB – Area of No Outstanding Beauty. Acquired by corporations, industry and government to exploit natural resources, or for strategic functions. Examples include quarries, power stations, military training facilities and the occasional vehicle testing centre. Often a scar on the landscape, but not necessarily and with some possessing a rare beauty or threatened fauna and flora. Not always inaccessible but mainly.

BALLOCKS – Errr….that would just be private golf courses then (see HLG above)?

PFUC’T – Public Footpath U Can’t Trace. Anglo-Saxon in origin. When prefixed by first person singular pronouns “I” and “am,” usually implies a moment in time, and in the middle of nowhere, when turning back is no longer an option and nearly all hope is lost. Missing the target train is now highly likely if that still remains a high priority at that moment in time

Coastal Erosion – It’s what it says on the tin, or plastic bag, or polystyrene wrapper or whatever else has washed up on the thin wafer of beach between sea and land that you have found, and because it’s probably washed away the path on your map too, now regret having found.

SSH’Ts – Static Holiday Home’s and Trailers – Only really SSH’T’s when their presence prevents coastal path access. So far that hasn’t been a major issue but one or two have required inland diversions.

FFS – Self explanatory (and mindful of some of the rules of this blog site which I have read in full). All other circumstances when the will to live is almost lost and the use of colourful language is the only realistic and meaningful connection with what’s left of your remaining reality. Usually occurs when unexpectedly exceeding 60 miles in a day, or hanging by your jacket, which is attached to barbed wire, over a 200 foot drop and just at the moment when the pannier, with a mind of its own, comes away from the bike and starts rolling slowly towards the edge.