We don’t often journey south, so this weekend’s trip almost felt like a visit to a foreign country… this wasn’t surprising as Essex is somewhat like a foreign country! Our first destination was Hadleigh where we joined my old friend Clare and her husband Ilir to celebrate the blessing of their marriage. After the blessing we retired to the delightful ground of ‘The Lawn’ where we soaked up the atmosphere and enjoyed a lovely three-course meal. The speeches following the meal were jovial and interesting and were followed by dancing. We particularly enjoyed the kosovan dancing…. which was very much like the greek dancing at Bill and Artemis’ wedding. We should have been well practiced… but we weren’t!
On Sunday Richard and I needed to fit in some training and so as we were in the south, Richard suggested that we visit the Seven Sisters because they were only 60 miles away. The miles were a little longer than we first anticipated, but the views of the chalk cliffs were amazing. We parked at Birling Gap and made our way along the beach beneath the towering white faces of the Seven Sisters. When we got to Cuckmere Haven we continued along the coast to get a fabulous view back over the cliffs.
We retraced our steps to the Cuckmere River and then followed it to Alfriston where we turned off towards Wilmington to see the Long Man of Wilmington, a 16th-18th century hill figure. With only an hour to go on our parking ticket we realised that we should get a move on and so we quickened our pace and headed back to Birling Gap. After another hour we arrived back and ate ice cream to recover some of the calories spent over the 17 mile run, before heading home.
We enjoyed our weekend in the ‘south’ and it was nice going somewhere new. This was particularly true because we got to see a new fake tree that we hadn’t seen before!
Yes, the south is like a different country – I think it even has a different population… 😈
When I first read “only 60 miles away” I thought you had run that far! I can’t describe the relief when I got to “17 mile”.
I just didn’t appreciate how long 60 miles, including the Dartford crossing and Royal Tunbridge Wells on a sunny weekend in July might take to drive! 🙁 It almost would have been quicker to run! 🙄
Dare I ask what you might be training for?
I don’t think we really train “for” stuff, we just train in case any stuff comes along. 🙂
This took me back, it is about 25 years since I went to 7 sisters, Alfriston etc.
With apologies to those who are unfortunate enough to live in Essex – it’s not just a foreign country – some of the people who live there are on another planet!
😆