Above - Bognor seafront.
Above - the pebbles so characteristic, it would seem, of every south coast 'beach'.
Above - the English Channel as seen from Bognor Pier.
Above - Bognor seafront as seen from Bognor Pier.
Above - Hotham Park.
Above - Hotham Park again.
Above - purchase of the year (so far) - William.Yesterday (Saturday) I went on a day trip - to Bognor Regis. Bognor is located about 30 miles west along the coast from Brighton. So, naturally, it took me 2 hours and 10 minutes to get there... ?!?!
I took the Stagecoach Coastliner 700 which has the snappy catch phrase of 'cruise along the coast' (I think 'crawl along the coast may be more precise but still, I imagine it wouldn't be as good for business) from Churchill Square to Bognor High Street. I arrived at 11h20 and headed for the tourist information centre where I picked up more leaflets on The Isle of Wight than Bognor. I then wandered through a market and made my way to the sea front.
Bognor sea front is somewhat like Brighton sea front in that it lacks sand. Indeed, these southern seaside resorts that boast beaches are beginning to redefine in my mind what a beach actually is. For me, a beach always used to need to include that key golden ingredient - yes, sand! It would seem in this part of the world that to classify as a beach all you need is pebbles. And that was indeed what Bognor had - pebbles galore, just like Brighton.
Besides the pebbles the seafront was pretty similar to Brighton's - tacky souvenir shops where I confess I bought postcards, there were ice cream and coffee huts, public toilets - better kept than Brighton's, and deckchairs you could hire for a whole £1 less than in Brighton. There was even something resembling a Pier - or at least some kind of wooden jetty thing protruding out over the sea that you could walk on.
After exploring the sea front I headed back to the High Street where I found a nice little cafe for some lunch - tomato soup. I then took a walk to the other end of the High Street and along a bit towards Butlins (there's where Bognor gets one up on Brighton - it has a Butlins Holiday Camp - and it can keep it too!) and to Hotham Park - the only tourist attraction besides the beach and a museum - the contents of which didn't draw me to visit - a Museum of the Social History of Bognor incorporating a Wireless History Museum - interesting combo, maybe next time.
Hotham Park was smallish with a small boating lake (about the size of a swimming pool - I'd like to see them fit any more than one boat on it at a time), a few flowers and a few more trees. After 15 minutes I'd exhausted the garden and headed back for the sea front - at the opposite end of the town (surely Bognor is not a city?!) this time. Still no sand. I then decided to settle in a coffee shop - sitting outside in the sun I ordered a latte and opened my Austria tour guide I picked up in the Oxfam Bookshop in Hove several weeks ago and had brought with me for the looooooooooooooooooong bus journey only to find the bus bumped up and down so much I couldn't make out the print. I sat in the sun reading my travel guide and sipping on what was, most definitely, the weakest cup of coffee I've ever tasted. In fact, I'd go as far to say it was the worst cup of coffee I'd ever tasted. So bad in fact that, if I'd not have known it was coffee, I'd have been certain it was coloured hot water... maybe it was.
Anyway, it was now mid afternoon and black clouds were starting to appear. I drank 2/3 of the brown water that pretended to be coffee and headed for the shops. There were the usual High Street names along with a few other, more individual shops. For saying it was a Saturday afternoon it wasn't that busy. I browsed around and then found the purchase of the year (so far). A Leonardo ornament of a Labrador sitting about 25cm high holding a lead in his mouth - it was William! I just had to have it. He even had a name tag on that the man in the shop engraved with 'William' for me! After finishing browsing the shops - I didn't buy anything else other than the dog and a couple of postcards, I went back to the High Street and caught the bus back to Brighton.
I arrived back at 17h40 after another bumpy 2 hours and 10 minutes of going through Russington, a place called East Preston - I thought Preston was up north, mind you, I'd been on the bus long enough to have arrived up north, but the eventual glimpse of the sea and lack of sand confirmed I was indeed still somewhere along the south coast, Littlehampton, Worthing, Shoreham and finally Brighton.
So all in all an interesting day. Bognor is a smaller, cleaner and calmer version of Brighton. But then again I'm starting to get the impression that most places along the south coast are.
Oh and according to the dictionary beach is "an area of sand sloping down to the water of a sea". (worldnetweb.princeton.edu)
