We went for a bit of an explore in the area around Brighton today. Originally we were going to go up to Devils Dyke for some kite flying with the Brighton Kite Flyers but by the time we’d got ourselves sorted it was raining and the wind was far too strong. We headed off in that direction anyway, and had a quick stop at one of the parking areas to have a look around. The visibility was very low so we didn’t see much although we did see Ashford Forest in the distance (this is where Winnie the Pooh lived in the books by A. A. Milne) . We then decided to drive off to Ditchling Beacon.
As we were driving towards it, we noticed there were a lot of people road running: it was the London to Brighton Road Race. I hadn’t seen any publicity about this and the poor chaps and chapesses had already ran about 47 miles by the time we caught up with them (it’s 55 miles in total). It was rainy and really windy and they were going up some pretty steep hills – rather them than me. It was hard work driving amongst them, trying not to soak them from the puddles (although to be honest it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference to them) and trying not to rev the engine too much when driving behind them.
We left them behind when we headed off towards Newhaven. We went to the car park for Newhaven Fort, and looked down on the sea. We didn’t even get out of the car – it was just too wet and windy. We then headed off towards the West Beach of Newhaven and pulled in to the car park and watched the sea breaking over the wall. We figured we ought to attempt to get some photos of this, so we did, although we both got very wet in the process.
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This was definitely enough exploring for one day, so we headed off home to dry out.
