5 October 2016: Beachy Head
We drive to the sea today. To Beachy Head, a land tongue at the south coast of England. The white chalk cliff rises up to 162 metres from the beach, the highest of all of Britain. The visitor centre is lovely – you really need to go in back and not just turn around after the first room. For example, they have buttons you can push to listen to the sounds of the local birds.
We leave the car at the parking lot and start on foot. After the first few metres, we leave the tarred path onto a meadow with very short grass. It’s extremely windy and all of the trees and bushes lean to one side. Our hair almost gets blown off, too. At the edge of the cliff, we see the sea and a lighthouse down below. It’s a beautiful view and really worth visiting Beachy Head.
We hike back and forth along the edge of the cliff until we get back to the tarred path.
After finishing the path back to the parking lot, we continue to the Birling Gap a bit further down the coast where the cliffs ‘only’ rise up about 10-15 metres. There’s a staircase down to the beach, a hotel, a café where we have a snack and another visitor centre. We learn here that the cliffs erode by about 40 to 70 centimetres per year due to the wind and the elements. The hotel already had to be shortened by a bit as that part would have fallen down soon. But now, it’s only a matter of years until he rest of the hotel and the café will be directly at the edge of the cliff.
After all the nature, we now drive to the nearby town of Eastbourne where we stroll along the pier and the beach. Swimming season – if there’s something like that in Britain – is already over and the ice cream huts are closed. It’s really windy here as well.
We now head back to Aldershot and make a stop to show Chrige the beautiful old town of Guildford.
We pick up a large Pizza Hut pizza and eat in the room while watching The Great British Bake Off. It’s dessert week and we’d love to have some of these desserts after the pizza.