3rd August 2011 11:00pm, Cherry Tree Guest House, Eastbourne

Although in Eastbourne now, I wil start with some words on Canterbury. Canterbury Cathedral provoked two totally different thoughts in me. 1) WOW, this is amazing! 2) What an impressive waste of stone! (£16,000 per day for upkeep and all that; that's mental!) And by the way: The naked woman was not as impressive as I hoped, so I decided to move on - to Eastbourne. Not before having dinner, of course. As it was my birthday (once again), I decided to allow myself some of ye olde intoxicating huguenot liquor, Champagne, which was strange given that I was at a Cuban restaurant. But anyway, moving on...

In Eastbourne I checked in at a guest house called 'Cherry Tree'. Now, a lot of B&Bs are named for some pretty outlandish reason. They are called "The Albert Crumplebottom" because a duke/general/poet/etc named thus has once spent a night at said place. Or they are called "Sandown" although they are in Dover (don't bother about how that makes sense; they also had a dog called Jade working as chambermaid there). But Cherry Tree was different: They actually have a cherry tree (prunus avium) in the yard, which is fair enough because the clue's in the name. But moreover, in the whole house it smells of cherry and they had cherries for breakfast. Again, clue's in the name.

The pier is interesting. Not only for the view, the benches of rotten wood and children in casinos; the pier also provides an exciting olfactory experience. This unique British seaside fragrance, I call it 'Channel No.5', is a mix of saltwater, fresh paint and fish. Prevalent all across the pier, this Channel No.5 is only partly interrupted by the unpleasant smell of urine.
Walking the pier, which can be seen in the photo, I redicovered my strong objection to Fish & Chips. "Fish & chips is probably one of the most disgusting, nauseating meal humankind has ever invented" (this is a literal translation from a Frenchman talking to his wife on the pier). It might be the first time I agree with a Frenchman... It IS disgusting: white, mushy potatoes, a bit of fish soft boiled beyond recognition and tons of mayo all wrapped up in a newspaper. What have we invented bloody plates for?! Just a coffee for me, please...

Walking down the promenade I saw a nicely trimmed lawn. On a sign it said "Parade Bowling Club". Outdoor bowling, on a lawn? You're kidding! Well, it's actually called Bowls and what it is, in a nutshell: A couple of 70+ year olds dressed in all white rolling not-perfectly-round balls (thereby not actually balls) over a lawn, trying to get close to a smaller, perfectly-round white ball. There is a Home and an Away team, which is pretty pointless as all the players probably were from Eastbourne, and one round is called an End. I left after six ends and a score of 7:2 in favour of the home team.
All this made me hungry, so I decided to go for some traditional British seaside grub (though remember, NO fish & chips). Well, in the end I had gyros with tzatziki, to be honest...

Keep walking...

johnniewalker