Venturing Out!

Considering the grand English tradition of "touristing" and going "on holiday," what trip to London would be complete without getting out of the city for a seaside jaunt? And so this leg of our journey at last found Bianka and Gregory riding one of the giant white ants of the National Express bus system to Margate and all three SOAC members taking the National Rail South to Brighton.

Margate, as any congenial Bay Inspector can tell you, boasts a clean and quite placid beach where the warm waters of the North Sea greet you immediately at the seaside bus stop. Alex, the aforementioned Bay Inspector of the area, is the local assurance against dogs getting onto this beach. He also recommends pubs such as The Lighthouse (which gave us front-row seats to the local classic cars rally) and has a masters degree in Songwriting . Alex also tells us that busking, while not frequently encountered in Margate, can be a lucrative endeavor in the right season.  Also we found this...

A concrete walkway at the base of chalk cliffs leads you from Margate to Botany Bay. Lights from the barges off shore bobbed against the sunset as Bianka and Gregory strolled in blissful holiday solitude.

At Botany Bay (England, not New South Wales) it is quite easy to imagine Viking ships ducking in and out of the windswept coves, emerging from behind one of the chalk cliffs to do battle…perhaps with the rival navy of the Giant Sand Fleas! Our overnight stay on this beach was a veritable recreation of the 1996 flick "From Dusk Till Dawn"…only instead of vampires our 10 hours or so were spent fighting locust-sized sand fleas which swarmed en masse. 

Brighton is a blond-pebbled beach experience just an hour out of London by rail. It's complete with a large district of boutique shops, a blond-pebbled beach, amusement park pier, and everything else you might image to fill in the spaces in-between with the exception of a massive royal palace built like an Indian temple. While none of us specifically planned to visit Brighton during a storm of sorts, the wind and rain was no deterrent to three weathered Oregonians such as ourselves.  In fact, for a moment we felt like we were home as this 360 degree video clearly depicts.

The harsh winds also brought us closer in spirit to the photographs of rugged mustached men in the free exhibit inside the fishing museum. The museum also featured an exhibit on Punch and Judy: the puppets were an institution of the Brighton street entertainment scene in its day. The throngs of tourists were steady enough that traveling Punch and Judy puppeteers would set up permanent residency in Brighton, getting money enough from their street shows.

There are allegedly several street performers to be found around the city nowadays as well, however the gentleman at the vegetable stand says that musician buskers are not as common and we wonder whether or not this town would provide similar obstacles as busking in Camden. 

If you ask any Londoner to estimate the transit time between any two Tube stations in London, their response will always be "about an hour" which actually means more than an hour. Considering this, the temptation to reside in one of these pleasant beach towns rather than in London proper is tangible.