Yesterday was a nice day. Nobody fell over in the mud and nobody got chased by a horse. There was a horrific delay for one of us (me) on the way home but even that couldn't ruin the day. The weather was almost perfect for walking (warm but with a gentle breeze - at one point I even undid a button on my cardigan), the scenery was beautiful, both the pubs we sat outside were splendid, the curry was tasty and reasonably priced, and, most importantly of all, the company was ace.
Having had to postpone last week's planned walk from Dorking to Reigate via Box Hill (primarily because of the heatwave) I was eager to get out and about and amongst it so I'd woken ridiculously early yesterday morning (before 5am) and I was out of the house not long after 0800hrs. A train to Norwood Junction, another to East Croydon where I met Pam, and then one last train down to Lancing. A place, like Shoreham-by-Sea - our final destination, I'd never visited before.
I actually got quite excited when I finally saw the sea (it's been a while) and by the time we arrived in Lancing we found Shep, Laura, and Adam not just already in the Rainbow Cafe but finishing up their brunches. Shep said the chips were ace and I had chips, beans, and bread and butter (washed down with a cup of tea) and can confirm he was correct. It was good to have my appetite back after suffering with some acid reflux over the last couple of weeks. So bad I vomited outside a cafe in Honor Oak Park last Saturday after making the mistake of having beans on toast. The tomato sauce the beans are marinated in are not good when you have that condition.
On leaving the pub, and admiring the steep roofed Farmers pub and a rather blocky red Ford Granada and commenting on the rather strange Ye Olde Worlde font used for the Lancing Burger Bar, we came to a church that was hosting a summer fete. From behind, it looked as if the town crier had turned up but once we got closer we realised it was a man dressed up as Adam Ant. He soon gained the name 'shit Adam Ant' and became something of a theme for the rest of the day. We made our way to the beach front and the promenade. The Rainbow Cafe has a huge photography of an idyllic looking seaside resort across two of its walls. Golden sands. I assumed it to be Lancing but on reaching Lancing beach it turned out to be very pleasant - but stony.
Beach huts flanked us as we wandered down the promenade, too full even for a traditional seaside ice cream, with views across the sea to Brighton and its i360 viewing tower. Lancing gained popularity with the gentry as a seaside resort in the 19c. They liked the town's secluded atmosphere. Nowadays, it's part of a large urban sprawl that could essentially be seen as Greater Brighton. Brighton, Hove, Portslade, Shoreham, Lancing, and on to Worthing.
Remains of what might have been an Iron Age fort have been found in Lancing as well as signs of a Romano-British temple and from the start of the nineteenth century much of the land in the area has been used for growing tomatoes, grapes, and carnations for Covent Garden and Brighton markets. The name Lancing is believed to mean "the people of Wlanc/Hlanc" and notable Lancing people include Tim Rice, Evelyn Waugh, Tom Sharpe, and Peter Pears. The boxer Henry Cooper was evacuated to Lancing as a child during World War II and Oscar Wilde visited while staying in nearby Worthing. Lady Lancing was the working title for The Importance of Being Earnest. Algernon Charles Swinburne is other celebrated visitor and Lancing is twinned with Riom in France and Zwyiec in Poland. Yes, the town that gave us the beer of the same name.
Past a house with a lifesize statue of a cow in the garden and a shed that has a dinosaur smashing through it, we continued along until we reached the Widewater Lagoon. Alas, we saw no slow worms, bats, or lizards (though there was both a ladybird and a couple of caterpillars, and loads of butterflies later - along with plenty of gulls, swans, a couple of egrets, and even an oystercatcher).
From here we came away from the coast, passed through a small but pleasant housing estate, past The Longshore pub (looked like a Harvester and hosted clairvoyancy events), Laura popped in to the Little Waitrose, and we carried along the A259 until we were almost in Shoreham. But, of course, that would be far too easy (and far too short) a walk so just before we reached the Adur river we cut through the Adur Recreation Ground and round the edge of Brighton City Airport where small jets and helicopters were taking off (at quite slow speeds) from a grass runway. Adam joked that Rishi Sunak was probably using one of the helicopters to get a sandwich.
In truth, the airport (which probably doesn't see a lot of international flights or jumbo jets) was founded in 1910 and has featured in Poirot, The Crown, and The Da Vinci code. We had our first look at the famous Shoreham Tollbridge. The last of its kind in Sussex and one of the last of its kind in the world. It was built in 1781-2 (though refurbished in 2008) and it's still quite a sight. It looks a bit rickety. Before the bridge was built, the Adur was a major obstacle for travellers though some forded it on horseback (!) and others used a 'dangerous' ferry to get across the water. Later on, in the pub, I read the Wikipedia section about 'financing' the bridge to the others. They looked bored.
The Adur itself, entirely in Sussex (a county that - in Norman times - was divided into regions called 'rapes'), is quite a short river. It's just twenty miles long. In the Shirley Collins song Archangel Hill she sing-talks of her love for her home county of Sussex and in section she mentions its river. The Rother, the Arun, and the Ouse all get a mention but the Adur does not make the cut.
On the horizon for much of this part of the walk was the imposing, and architecturally impressive, Lancing College Chapel (whose motto - Blessed Are The Pure In Heart - I nicked for the walk's name). Lancing College's notable alumni include Tim Rice, Evelyn Waugh, Tom Sharpe, the painter Frederick Gore, Jamie Theakston, Sinclair Beecham (yes, the co-founder of Pret a Manger - no, I'd never heard of him either), and the cricketer Dunlop Manners who I included just because I like his name.
The plan was to follow the Adur from hereon but a large section of it was fenced off so instead we headed back down the Old Shoreham Road, crossed the busy A27/Shoreham Bypass and walked along the thankfully quiet, green and winding, Coombes Road (the nearby Ricardo Noise Test Track reminding us, not that we needed reminding, of our friend Bugsy).
It was near here, on the A27 road, that a Hawker Hunter T7 airplane crashed during the 2015 Shoreham Airshow and killed eleven people on the ground. The next year the airshow was cancelled and, as yet, it has never been held again. A sad story.
Clouds were gathering in the sky but they never brought any rain, just provided cover from the sun on a day when the weather was close, muggy, or humid (choose your favourite adjective) and when zephyrs were most welcome. Blue tits, however, were not so welcome. Not by everyone. As poor Mr/Mrs/Ms Post-person had been politely informed.
After a couple of kilometres we hopped over a gate (and then under another one) and back into the (bean) fields to pick up, via a slight going back on ourselves, the river path once again. This stretch felt quite lengthy and at one point Adam, Pam, and myself got quite a long way ahead of Shep and Laura. It brought back memories of September 2021 when the three of us walked a stretch of the Arun from near Littlehampton to Ford.
The fact the river looked similar helped too, all wide muddy banks, slow moving water, graceful curves, and cooing gulls. Laura had a bit of a sore ankle. A lot of people would have probably knocked it on the head for a day but she's a trooper and stuck with it. When we finally reached the footbridge (near a van selling coffee and a tap dispensing water, I'd had to inform the walkers earlier that the pubs would not come until right at the end of the walk) we waited for Shep and Laura to catch us up, had a bit of a breather then headed back down the Adur looking across to the bank we'd just walked up it along.
I'd worried that might be a bit boring (or at least repetitive) but nobody complained and everyone seemed pretty happy. We stopped to admire some horses, and the aforementioned oystercatcher, and, just after a statue of a bird that someone had graffitied a pair of tits and a fanny on, we reached, again, the Shoreham Tollbridge.
This was good news for all concerned because this meant we'd reached the pub. Two pubs in fact. The Amsterdam Inn looked lovely but so did The Red Lion and as The Red Lion had its own Wikipedia page and seemed to be of historical importance we headed there and took a table in its really rather lovely beer garden. I, of course, read from that Wikipedia page.
The pub was established in the sixteenth century on the site of a former monastery and Alfred, Lord Tennnyson's poem Rizbah (not quite as well known as The Charge Of The Light Brigade) is based on a 19c incident at the inn when some 'robbers' were captured and executed. Earlier robbers fared equally badly - or worse. In 1793, a gang of them robbed a mail coach and, as punishment, were hanged in front of a large crowd and their bodies left to rot on a gibbet as a warning to others. You ever wonder where ISIS get their ideas from?
Another robber, my - there's a lot of robbers in Sussex, was caught burgling a nearby 18c mansion (Buckingham House) and shot dead. Nobody could identify him so his body was placed in a glass topped coffin and left on display in The Red Lion! Still, nobody was able to identify it. But one day a dog came in the pub and refused to leave the coffin. The body was identified as the dog's owner, John O'Hara.
The Red Lion is now Grade II listed and, thankfully, there are no longer dead bodies on display in the pub. We sat in the garden, supped our beer and wine, and talked, as ever, complete shit before making the inevitable, and why not, two pint mistake. Though not for Pam who was off to Burgess Hill to attend a party marking our friend Dan and his wife Ruth's wedding anniversary. I'd have gone myself but as I'd arranged the walk I thought I ought to prioritise that (and I'm glad I did - though it seems everyone had great fun at the party).
From The Red Lion, strictly speaking in Old Shoreham - which dates back to Roman times, we headed down Old Shoreham Road (past the Indian restaurant we'd used later - a young man and his very cute daughter were picking up a takeaway and he told us we were in for a treat) and on to the High Street. There was a lovely red VW Beetle, some quirky architecture, a lifesize model of a pirate, some history about smuggling, and lots of rather pleasant looking pubs. Adam decided, and I think he was on to something, that Shoreham appears to be Brighton's Essex. Meaning Shoreham is to Brighton what somewhere like Leigh-on-Sea is to London.
A slightly more tranquil, relaxed, and - probably - cheaper place to live but with a pleasant slightly bohemian vibe. It wasn't unlike parts of St Leonards. A pedestrian bridge took us back across the Adur to a small peninsula that would have eventually led us to the beach. But instead we repaired to The Waterside Inn (a pub that supports the Seagulls (Brighton FC) if not the seagulls (that steal your chips).
It was a nice spot. Looking out to the boats rusting away on the muddy banks of the Adur, dog walkers and Saturday drinkers living their best lives, and a general air of civility and friendliness. We only stayed for one as I'd booked the curry for 7pm. We were there early for once and they even served Bangla. Shep initially ordered a Cobra but I put him straight!
The service was prompt and friendly, the poppadoms were warm and tasty (particularly good raita, I thought) and the menu was fairly standard so I had tarka daal, garlic naan, and shared some pulao rice with Adam who sang the praises of his madras. Shep and I had another Bangla each and we were pretty much done before it had even got dark.
I'd not even got round to reading out my Shoreham spiel but there wasn't much of it anyway. A list of Shoreham notables that included Leo Sayer (born in Shoreham), Max Miller (the Cheeky Chappie lived there), and Nicholas von Hoogstraten (or, in the parlance of Carter USM, Nicholas von Whatshisface). St Nicholas Church in the town is partly Anglo-Saxon in its construction and New Shoreham (the beach and port area) was established by the Normans in the eleventh century. A Muslim geographer of the era, Muhammed al-Idrisi, described Shoreham as "a fine and cultivated city containing buildings and flourishing activity". Illuminating. It sounds like the opening to an episode of Mary, Mungo, and Midge. 11c travel writing appears to have been a piece of piss.
We left the curry house and I walked to the station with Shep, Laura, and Adam. When they went off to get the car (they'd driven - car lot) I picked up some train booze and was on the 2113 train back to East Croydon. Reading the paper (a PJ Harvey interview and an excellent feature by Caitlin Moran), charging my phone up, uploading photos from the walk, and sipping my beer from a can (must remember to pack a bottle opener in future) all had seemed well with the day and well with the world and I wasn't overly worried when they said there may be a slight day at Gatwick Airport due to an incident in Purley.
'Slight' was not the word. Everybody was turfed off the train at Gatwick with no information whatseover as to what time the next train would come - or if a train even would come. Somebody had jumped on the track, near Purley, and killed themselves which is obviously tragic and of far more important than my, or anyone else's, delayed journey. Once we were turfed out of the station and into the airport proper we were informed by (understandably stressed) railway staff that our best option would be to team up with people and get a taxi.
Uber, being a bunch of horrible capitalist bastards, has the sort of software that can really exploit these situations and they were quoting £200 for a cab to London. Most people were not prepared, or able, to pay that. I had another can and then noticed Wetherspoons was open so popped in there for a pint where I chatted to a friendly chap from Dublin. He even bought me a second pint and when the pub closed (before M&S) I found a spot on the concourse and managed about half an hour of sleep.
At roughly 2.30am (four and a half hours after I'd arrived at Gatwick) a train pulled up. Of course, by then, there were hundreds of people waiting to board it including lots of people who'd just got off flights and had loads of luggage with them. Remarkably, I got a seat and the train slowly crawled to East Croydon. From there I got a bus to West Norwood and walked about three miles home. It was just gone 5am, and completely light, by the time I got home.
I wasn't too bothered. It wasn't like I had early morning (or any morning) plans for today (Sunday) and I'd had such a nice day out with four lovely people that I wasn't going to let some end of day transport chaos ruin it. It had been a good TADS walk, always different, always the same. Thanks to Shep, Laura, Pam (also, as ever, for some of the snaps in this blog), Adam, and Shit Adam Ant for joining me.
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