Bognor two

The meal at the first night at the Beachcroft hotel started with a fish soup, good but rather rich, rather a lot of cream. Also unusual in that it contained half a dozen or more prawns in their shells, which needed to be extracted from the soup and shelled in order to eat them - my not getting on very well with the shells. Too crunchy for me. Bread took the form of miniature brown loaves, warm, either plain or cheese flavoured. Followed by baked cod on top of a mound of mashed potato, as seems to be de rigueur these days. Baked cod was good, certainly by the standards of restaurants, but the mashed potato was distinctly stale, clearly warmed up from some previous life. Washed down with a bottle of Petit Chablis 2014 from Laroche, an outfit which reference 1 claims has been at it for 1,000 years. Chablis was OK in any event.

The miniature brown loaves made a second appearance for breakfast, by this time a little tired, but no other bread was on offer. I made the mistake of thinking that 'fresh Scottish kippers' might be something like that, but turned out to be the usual shrink wrapped fillets, warmed up and doused in butter. Not my sort of thing at all, but BH rather liked them and wound up having them two or three times in the course of our stay.

Being bright and fresh, it was clearly a day for a walk west along the esplanade day, as far as the café on Marine Drive West, a stretch with beach huts, roughly at gmaps 50.779372, -0.693194. Tide was going out and we were able to walk on the sand below the stones for most of the way. Beach attractive in the bright sun. Some breeze, with the seagulls seeming to prefer to sit in small flocks, head to wind.

Along the way, intrigued by the advertisement above. How did Ogwen Mountain Rescue get in on the act?  Was there some jobbing gardener in the neighbourhood, scratching enough of a living out of the people who had retired to the fancy thatched cottages to the east and west of Bognor, to fund scrambling up rock faces in North Wales? See references 2 and 3.

Also on the way, took in the gardens at the Steyne (presumably named in honour of the one at Brighton), illustrated in the snap above. Someone, presumably the council, are doing a good job on the gardens, but the square itself is a bit seedy, ripe for gentrification. Plenty of foreigners about, including one obstreperous & noisy drunk, this being before noon. Luckily he had a someone with him, leading him home.

The pub, centre right, did not look as smart as I remember it. I feel sure we took afternoon refreshment there on some previous occasion, with the interior involving quite a lot of brown polished wood, fifties style. Rather a clubby feel to the place. Can't trace the visit now.

Rather an inferior bacon sandwich at the café, bread OK but bacon both rubbery and salty.

Mysterious structure in the sea to the west of the beachside café. Maybe the remnant of a second world war jetty?

Strolled back to the hotel for a siesta, meeting a couple who had retired to Walberton from Uxbridge a few years ago. A couple who looked to be quite similar to ourselves in wealth, habit and outlook . He knew all about the drug smugglers being processed through the Uxbridge courts there and might well have been a retired civil servant. Aeroplane noise not an issue, with the flight path maybe five miles away. But no longer the market town on the outskirts of London, not unlike Epsom, that it used to be. That said, I got a whiff of their missing the bright lights. Countryside all very well, but Chichester not quite the same thing as the West End.

Later, we repaired to the nearby Lobster Pot Café for a fine crab salad: dressed crab packed into the shell, green salad and small new potatoes in their skins, half boiled half fried. Touch of New Zealand sauvignon blanc to wash it down with and some kind of cake for dessert. All very good. Clearly a place which is doing well with lots of cheerful young waitresses.

The slip-way below the Lobster Pot, with the concrete much worn by the pebbles thrown about in winter storms.

The off-shore wind farm continued inactive, with none of the propellers turning, despite the fresh breeze from the west. There was some kind of small rig in attendance, so perhaps the farm was not yet finished, with the drill being that you don't turn anything on until you can turn them all on.

PS: current view is that gmaps is better for most of my purposes than bing maps. I think this is more than just being more familiar with it. Maybe MS is not matching the Google spend.

Reference 1: http://www.larochewines.com/fr.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/yaverland-three.html.

Reference 3: http://www.ogwen-rescue.org.uk/. From which I learn the interesting new word 'cragfast'.