Brighton, Ho!

In the country-wide search for English oak to be used as the continuation of our floor on the outside, we drove to a timber merchant on the south coast called Roundwood Timber Co. They had exactly what we needed - the hunt is over and the order is in.

We spent the afternoon in Tunbridge Wells, looking around the many book stores and antiques shops. The lower half of the town is very pretty and oldy-worldy, the upper half like every other vanilla-flavour town in England. No, we didn't meet "Disgusted-of-Tunbridge Wells"!

A trip to the South Coast could not be complete without fish 'n chips by the sea. We drove to Brighton, eat to our hearts content and took a wonderful stroll along the pier. It was quite a sight because of the sun set, pictured here. The pier itself is magnificant. It must have bee renovated in the not too distant past because it was very well maintained. It was appropriately tacky in a Victorian way, giving the whole place a definite charm. All along the pier there are amusement arcades, rides, places to eat and, of course, lots of places to just sit and view Brighton from off-shore. B had a particularly good time on the car rides but he wasn't so keen on crashing in the bumper cars - despite being the only one on it at the time!