Just a short leg this morning, in glorious sunshine before seeking out the A34 and a return home. Beach huts is the theme for the day. Now these are everywhere lining the beach in their idiosyncratic way. However classy or run-down a coastal settlement is there will always be a row, or two or three, of beach huts which reflect the character of the area. Look at these and see what I mean. In all cases the pebbly beach is long and wide and straight. The beach huts top the slight landward rise and give way to a promenade or cycle path which then drops away to the residential areas and the avenues and cull-de-sacs that stretch inland

Moving along the coast from Brighton, Hove has clusters of huts along the long seafront.

Before the working port of Shoreham Harbour (no beach huts here, only timber yards and docks) there is Portslade-by-Sea where the beach’s huts have all seen better days, as has the beach.

South Lancing starts to up the quality; from a distance anyway.

Lovely, elegant retro/Victorian party town of Worthing adds a touch of real class to these proceedings; well the pier does anyway.

The East Worthing to Goring-on-Sea guard is particularly impressive as the rising sun hits the angles and the beach hut equivelent of Colonel Mannering inspects his lines from his even more grand Victorian Seafront Shelfer.

I always imagined Littlehampton to be rather grander than it is. These huts line the approach to the town. Hmmmmm.

A final cup of tea on Littlehampton beach before the traffic-manic rush back to the concrete and clay of the city. Or something more seasidey if you fancy. Are these beach huts? Well they do line the beach and they are huts.

Sea you all soon.

A day that started and ended with two magnificent piers and an ultra special one with golden orbs in the middle. Do not go there. I said orbs and not balls. Oh…. and see if you can spot me- a kind of Where’s Wally but me and without a striped T-shirt. So I suppose nothing like it really.

Dawn was glorious. So up I bounced and down I went to the front. The sun shone so innocently on Hastings pier, lighting up its colours in fresh-faced shades of happy, summer colours.

My first port of call was Bexhill-on-Sea. A rather grand, Victorian, rather pompous sort of place which I quite liked.

From here a huge crescent of wide, pebbly bay stretches westward, lined by the beach gardens of well-to-do detached housing. Half way along is Pevency from where this expanse of beach and sea can best be seen stretching away in either direction. The only people to be seen are dog walkers with their dogs and their tight little bags of poo dangling from limp hands; the humans that is, not the dogs.

The first sight of the front at elegant, white, grand Eastbourne really does take the breath way. A long terrace of hotels and guest houses overlooks the road, the promenade and the wide contours of multi-browned pebbles, dissected by lines of groynes to keep them all in their rightful place. Behind this, the glory of Eastbourne pier stands out to sea, proud and strong, its golden domes blazing the sun’s reflection back into the town. Gold and white do go rather well together.

A short drive over the cliffs brings me firstly down to the calm that is Seaford.

Then, just to remind us that some people have to earn a living, rather than just holiday, it is another drive along the cliffs before dropping down into the working port of Newhaven.

Then back over the cliffs, through Peacehaven (for some reason I really like that name) to arrive in Brighton. Now, I could show you this image of the beach of Brighton which I am sure you are familiar with and you might say ‘a magnificent pier to end the day with’.

But I wanted to share with you some different images of the beach at Brighton and of a very different, but, I think, equally magnificent pier.

West Pier opened in 1866, closed in 1975 when it fell into disrepair which was then doubly compounded by two fires in 2003. Only a skeleton of rusting iron remains as the town’s most photographed feature. This contrasts with the nearby, state of the art viewing platform sponsored by BA which opened in 2016.

Well, my loyal followers. The sun decided to shine for a few days so I decided to come away for a few days and complete another leg of my coastal tour. So I head for Deal, in Kent. The plan is to come down around Dungeness and spend a night in Hastings which is why I’m sat at the window of a small Italian Italian in the old town.

I am gonna let the images tell their story of each place I visited. Some I really enjoyed, some I could easily never visit again. I liked Deal. It was small and cosey and had small English seaside town atmosphere.

Dover; hmmmmm. I followed some fisherman and found a side of town that I never expected to see. The western side of the highlight is protected by a huge pier and from that pier, which you access through the old cruise liner buildings, are so many groups of eastern European men, dozing in the sun, sleeping stretched out or teasing angry nibbling fish with some very expensive looking kit. Could be anywhere in the world on any pier; but hey, it’s Dover.

Folkestone has not got a lot to offer except the remains of the old train ferry track and viaduct which they are in the process of renovating.

Dungeness was intriguing – a mixture of 21st century wind farms and nuclear power stations shaken up with 60’s holiday bungalows (of do they live there permanently?), a few snassy Grand Design buildings, rusty abandoned tracks leading down to derelict fishing enterprises mixed with fibre glass silhouettes of catamarans in the far distance on the beach.

There then follows a number of villages which huddle along the road protected from the storms by the tall sea wall.. The only bright spot on this section is Rye Harbour with its clapper-boarded or rendered facades to protect the structures from the storms.

And finally Hastings with the Pier of the Year 2017. Why???? Maybe it’s Hastings’ turn.