Ever since we decided to go on this vacation, Brighton has been on our list of locations that we really wanted to visit. Marg has fond memories of her Granny, who told her about Brighton. Marg’s Granny had as a child taken many trips to the beach at Brighton. The Brighton she described was a fun town with a great beach and wonderful swimming in the English Channel. She compared it to the Port Stanley of the mid 20th century.
Unfortunately, truth has a way of correcting false impressions. The Brighton, of today, is more like Myrtle Beach than Port Stanley. The main road along the beach is filled with hotels and souvenir shops. The world famous “Brighton Pier” can only be described as tacky. The restaurants are expensive and seem to exclusively serve fish and chips. The beach is rocky and very hard to walk on. I can imagine that on the weekend it would be very crowded with young people on the prowl for a vacation romance.
Also, we discovered that the BBC weathercaster lies like the CTV London weathercaster. They told us that the weather would be partly cloudy and in the mid 20s. The weather, while we were in Brighton, was in the mid teens, very windy and not a hint of the sun.
We had fish and chips from the main restaurants on the pier, where we had a wonderful view of Brighton beach. It was a very relaxing way to spend some time.
During our walk on the beach, Marg was looking for "sea glass. She didn't find any, so we decided to visit one of the souvenir shops. We asked the lady, who owned the shop, and she said she had never heard of sea glass and she had been in the business for her entire life.. I guess it is a Lake Erie speciality.
So, we got to visit Brighton and found it was the ultimate tourist beach town, Despite my negative impressions, it was still a fun day out from London. On a sunny day it would be
so much better, but such is the risk you
take when you’re on vacation.
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