Brighton Rocks
Brighton Pier anyone?
It's a sunny, warm (for October) day and the children are all on half term. The older two are busy so I take numbers 3 & 4 to Brighton. Round the M25 to Godstone then straight down the M23 & A23 to the seafront. We're there in an hour exactly and the autumn sun is glinting on the tumbling waves thwacking their way onto the shingle. Seaguls shriek and the aroma of salty sea, fish & chips and candyfloss hit us hard, the Georgian hotels facing the seafront like regal-iced wedding cakes lined up in a row.
We walk down onto the shingle beach beside the Champagne & Oyster Cafe then head left towards the pier. As the music drifts towards us we decide there and then that the pier will be our focus for the day and we'll do all the stereotypical seaside things.
First we stick our heads through the cheeky postcard style paintings with the hole cut out for your face and that the English language doesn't have a name for! Next we pull out sandwich bags full of 2ps and 10ps and lose it alarmingly quickly on the penny falls machines.
The ten year old is now feeling despondent so I cheer him up with a tray of chips doused in ketchup. He eats so painstakingly slowly with the wooden two-pronged fork the seaguls which have gathered give up with a tut of their heads and waddle off to wait for some other child to drop theirs.
Making our way further down the pier I talk the fourteen year old out of getting a henna tattoo on the back of her neck and we line up for the helterskelter which provides a fantastic view back towards the beach. Straight from the helterskelter its onto the dodgems which surprisingly allow you to bump into each other, fortunate as the ten year old is driving and couldn't avoid anyone else if he tried!
All that's left is to skim stones into the sea and pop into the rock shops to dither over peppermint, spearmint, liquorice, fruit or humbug flavour sticks to take back home.
It's been such a lovely day and we've left plenty to do for our next visit........
