And of course, there has to be a picture of Paul with a cannon. The tall sail-like building in the background is the Spinnaker Tower. It's mostly just a viewing platform which also has a cafe and entertainment areas - it seems to be popular for wedding receptions - but you can also abseil down the side. Sadly, all the abseiling dates for this year were fully booked out so we couldn't do it :-)
It's about 85 miles from Portsmouth to Hastings, all on 'A' roads and a lot of it on the A27 which was the road we were on when we came into Portsmouth. However, the GPS was telling us that it was going to take the best part of three hours to get to Hastings, and when we started off we couldn't believe this. At that point the A27 was basically a motorway - multi-lane with a 70mph speed limit - and of course most people doing around 80mph.
However, we soon found out why it was going to take so long - other parts of this same road are 30mph segments through villages, or mile after mile of single lane road with constant roundabouts.
We finally arrived in Hastings around noon - the drive wasn't too bad although we had a couple of scary experiences including an ambulance needing to go past us while we were in the right hand lane on a busy roundabout, and a couple of other "roundabout experiences" - needing to be in a specific lane but with no indication whatsoever of what lane that should actually be! This was too early to check into our B&B, but we found a shopping centre with a large car park with very reasonable parking fees - only a pound for the whole day because it's Sunday.
So, first we just wandered through the shopping centre and had a coffee and a bite to eat, or more than a bite actually. In particular, Paul discovered a lovely concept called an Eccles Cake.
We then wandered right up the sea-front - it's what I'd think of as a typical English seaside resort with lots of children's entertainment (dodgem cars, miniature railway etc) and lots of adult entertainment too - hotels, gambling / casino establishments, restautants, etc. There was also a pier - it's still there in a way, but much of it burned down in 2010 and it's sadly still just a mangled wreck. The rest of the place still seems to be going strong though. I've certainly never seen more fish and chip shops in one place in my entire life!
When wandering back, we discovered a funicular railway that leads up to the ruins of Hastings Castle, so we went up and had a look at the spectacular view. We also walked around the castle but we didn't go in; the admission price was just a bit steep.
We then wandered back to the town, found our B&B and knocked on the door just to get some information about parking. Although it was before check-in time, the owner agreed to check us in then, which was really nice of her and made me feel really guilty as she and her husband were about to take their dogs for a walk.
The parking is interesting - there's no parking at the B&B; it's the grey building just in front of the one where the group of people is standing on the steps, and the car on that side of the street is parked illegally for the time of day:
but they gave us a voucher that's provided by the local council. It allows us to park in the council car park just around the corner for free, but only from 4pm to 11am. It's almost identical to the voucher the hotel in Portsmouth gave us (although we didn't need to use that one because we managed to snag one of the minimal number of car parks in the hotel grounds, but there was no chance of that here).
It was still too early to move the car so we went back to it, packed all the clothes that needed washing into our backpacks and walked the length of the town - again! - to the launderette. Once that was done, we walked back and moved the car then dragged our suitcases around to the B&B and up the stairs (no lifts!), before going out for one last walk to find some dinner - a Sub from Subway and a delicious fruit salad from Sainsbury's.
With all that "wandering", we walked well over 5 km today. As a pommie would say - I'm knackered.
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