A seven hour coastal walk. Starting in the old harbour in Hastings you climb East Hill from which you have a stunning view over Hasting's quirky old town. The Hastings Country Park starts right here and offers a protected, mostly woody coastline, past the famous nudist beach at Fairlight, which isn't really safe to access at the moment, all the way to Fire Hills where you exit the country park and come through a vaguely suburban sprawl along the coast before reaching Pett Level where you leave the sea along a canal towards Winchelsea, once a busy port but now left stranded inland as the sea has receded. It's weird walking underneath the old cliffs and coming through the old town gate now standing right in the middle of the fields. Hard to imagine it was once one of Englands most important ports. Then through the flatlands where we came across a herd of swans hanging out, Camber Castle in the distance, to Rye which you can see for miles looming on its hill, and finally Mermaid Street.
2 comments:
Looks even more lovely than Somerset/Cheddar! Lush scenery and ohhh I miss the sea sometimes! A shame I never visited whilst I lived in Brighton all those years!!
Oh well maybe we should sort out a walking holiday some time...seems to be all the rage these days!
we can definitely do a day out walking, I heartily recommed the Time Out Book of Country Walks (well both of them, there are two!), that would be cool!
Yeah, Hastings and that area was always a little too far from Brighton and is now a little too far for daytrips from London either. We spent most of the week before Easter in the little *historical* town of Battle near Hastings, and that's when we did that walk (in case you hadn't noticed the trees being a bit bare compared to right now in the pictures ;-) Have to say Hastings was a bit of a revelation, there are still some nasty bits and it definitely isn't Brighton in many ways but the old town and harbour are fun to explore and there is quite a good atmosphere. The so called 1066 country (a great tourism marketing concept, if there ever was one, that has now been extended to neighbouring areas in France as well) is really quite nice, lots of old stuff, and that coastal walk between Hastings and Rye is especially wild and quite varied. Elsewhere, the coast towards Eastbourne can be a bit too built up for my liking...though there are quiet pockets there too, Normans Bay was quite nice...
Anyway, thanks for checking in again. Let's meet soon!
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