Shivering by the sea

On Monday a few of us went on a trip to Brighton to have fun at the seaside. As I noted before the weather forecast wasn't exactly what we'd have liked with cold wind and rain expected, and when we set of the forecast proved all to accurate. Our train journey got off to a slightly late start after the first two trains we could have got were cancelled due to the "inclement" weather. However, once we finally made it down to Brighton we made the most of it. We took a walk through the Lanes, which host a variety of small, trendy, shops. One of my favourite shops to look around is a bric-a-brac shop called Snooper's Paradise which sells all kinds of random stuff - I was tempted by a huge shipwrights spanner! It's easy to spend ages wandering through this shop, but we were all pretty hungry, so went for lunch at a nearby pub. On the way the sun did attempt to show itself, but was always shot down by the wind and rain. The pub did a damn good pie and Steve tried to kill himself by bravely attempting to eat one and a half pounds of beef burger.

Filled with food we waddled down to the beach for an afternoon constitutional and to take in the bracing sea air. As Brighton beach is a pebble beach one of the only things to do is throw rocks into the sea, which we did for a short time until our interests were taken by a dead shark washed up on the shore! It was only about 45cm long and was probably some sort of dogfish that the scavengers had stripped of most of its internal organs. Craving the warmth of somewhere inside we went on to the pier to the amusements arcades. Each of us loaded up with a £1 bag of 2p's to fill up the 2p machines with. A couple of hours of pushing 2p's into slots, playing 4 player Daytona, and collecting prize tickets was enough excitement for us. We weren't particularly tempted by the fun fair rides at the end of the pier, but had a wander around them anyway balking at their extortionate costs. I'm sure the rides would have been heaving on a slightly nicer day, but with the weather no-one else was taking the risk of riding them.

We worked our way back to the train station by a couple of pubs and had to end the day with fish and chips for dinner. Stocked up with food and some beer from the offy we boarded our train home. It hadn't been the best of weather, but we all had a really good bank holiday and I didn't even have to go back to work the next day!