Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside
In lieu of the Book meme this week have a brief picspam. We decided to go away last weekend in order to make up for having been backwards and forwards to Lincolnshire so often recently. Neither of us can quite remember what gave us the idea of Broadstairs in Kent but it turned out to be a good choice. It's within very easy reach of London (and would have been even quicker to get there if we hadn't been too cheap to pay the extra train fare for the Javelin), was somewhere neither of us had ever been and it was just a pleasant place to relax. I can quite see why Charles Dickens liked it so much.
We set off on Saturday to a weather forecast of apocalyptic thunderstorms. I don't know where they went but they missed us. It got brighter later but here is Viking Bay, Broadstairs, on a late Saturday afternoon. It's called Viking Bay after Hengist and Horsa who were reputed to have landed here. The fact that Hengist and Horsa weren't Vikings seems to have escaped the good citizens of Broadstairs but maybe they thought Angle, Saxon or Jute Bay didn't have the same ring to it. The brown fort like building in the centre of the picture is Dickens's home Bleak House. When he lived there it was officially called Fort House so opinions vary on whether he named the novel after the house or the house was named after the novel. He wrote David Copperfield there and when we saw his study we were amazed he managed to do any work at all as it has the most fantastic view out to sea and to the harbour. I'd have spent all day staring at the view and not doing any work but obviously Dickens had a better work ethic than me.
The Dickens Museum and the house he based Betsy Trotwood's home on. Had the weather been less gorgeous we'd have gone in but as you will see the weather on Sunday was too sensational for a museum visit.
Viking Bay just felt like the sort of beach I would have loved as a child. It even had swing boats.
The lookout building on Broadstairs pier displayed several old ship figureheads from ships wrecked in the area (the Goodwin Sands are just out to sea). This is Hercules with his lion.
Broadstairs Pier is more a jetty than a pier. The lookout building is the one in the middle of the photo and in the distance you can just see the light glinting on the wind turbines of Thanet Wind Farm.
Sunday was a really glorious day. We walked out of the town along to Stone Bay, which is another lovely sandy beach. The sea was as smooth as glass and I was almost tempted to go in, but only almost.
We walked a little further on to the North Foreland lighthouse, which was the last manned lighthouse in Britain until 1998 when it was fully automated.
We would have walked on to Joss Bay but it was getting a little hot and ice-cream was calling. This is as close to Joss Bay as we got. It's supposed to be good for surfing but surf most definitely wasn't up on Sunday.
We walked back to Broadstairs via Stone Bay again and this scene did remind me of the Victorian painting of Pegwell Bay, which is not too surprising as Pegwell Bay is only a few mile away. The rock pools looked fascinating.
Back in Viking Bay the beach had filled up! It was actually quite hot but the one completely necessary item of a British seaside holiday, the windbreak, was still being put to good use.
After an ice-cream in one of Broadstairs two traditional ice-cream parlours we went to hunt down the plaque to Oliver Postgate who had lived in the town. It even had Clangers on it.
And that is it from Broadstairs. We had a lovely relaxing time and it felt as if we'd been away a week instead of 48 hours. The only downside was caused by this chap as the gulls were so noisy they kept waking us up. We came back feeling completely sleep deprived!
We set off on Saturday to a weather forecast of apocalyptic thunderstorms. I don't know where they went but they missed us. It got brighter later but here is Viking Bay, Broadstairs, on a late Saturday afternoon. It's called Viking Bay after Hengist and Horsa who were reputed to have landed here. The fact that Hengist and Horsa weren't Vikings seems to have escaped the good citizens of Broadstairs but maybe they thought Angle, Saxon or Jute Bay didn't have the same ring to it. The brown fort like building in the centre of the picture is Dickens's home Bleak House. When he lived there it was officially called Fort House so opinions vary on whether he named the novel after the house or the house was named after the novel. He wrote David Copperfield there and when we saw his study we were amazed he managed to do any work at all as it has the most fantastic view out to sea and to the harbour. I'd have spent all day staring at the view and not doing any work but obviously Dickens had a better work ethic than me.
The Dickens Museum and the house he based Betsy Trotwood's home on. Had the weather been less gorgeous we'd have gone in but as you will see the weather on Sunday was too sensational for a museum visit.
Viking Bay just felt like the sort of beach I would have loved as a child. It even had swing boats.
The lookout building on Broadstairs pier displayed several old ship figureheads from ships wrecked in the area (the Goodwin Sands are just out to sea). This is Hercules with his lion.
Broadstairs Pier is more a jetty than a pier. The lookout building is the one in the middle of the photo and in the distance you can just see the light glinting on the wind turbines of Thanet Wind Farm.
Sunday was a really glorious day. We walked out of the town along to Stone Bay, which is another lovely sandy beach. The sea was as smooth as glass and I was almost tempted to go in, but only almost.
We walked a little further on to the North Foreland lighthouse, which was the last manned lighthouse in Britain until 1998 when it was fully automated.
We would have walked on to Joss Bay but it was getting a little hot and ice-cream was calling. This is as close to Joss Bay as we got. It's supposed to be good for surfing but surf most definitely wasn't up on Sunday.
We walked back to Broadstairs via Stone Bay again and this scene did remind me of the Victorian painting of Pegwell Bay, which is not too surprising as Pegwell Bay is only a few mile away. The rock pools looked fascinating.
Back in Viking Bay the beach had filled up! It was actually quite hot but the one completely necessary item of a British seaside holiday, the windbreak, was still being put to good use.
After an ice-cream in one of Broadstairs two traditional ice-cream parlours we went to hunt down the plaque to Oliver Postgate who had lived in the town. It even had Clangers on it.
And that is it from Broadstairs. We had a lovely relaxing time and it felt as if we'd been away a week instead of 48 hours. The only downside was caused by this chap as the gulls were so noisy they kept waking us up. We came back feeling completely sleep deprived!