Ginger testing the water at St. Leonards-on-Sea

Day Seven

We spent the weekend catching up with family and the grandchildren.

As the grandchildren are otherwise occupied this week, we decided to rent a car and explore along the coast to the east of Portsmouth.

Thursday, we have arranged to meet Jacqi, a Flickr Friend we’ve known since 2007, in Brighton. Jacqi lives in New Zealand and is in the UK, touring and visiting family. It’s an opportunity far too good to miss. We last met up in 2011 in Missouri when she visited us while crossing the US on her way to her new home in New Zealand. Before that, we met in person for the first time in 2008 in Bletchley Park (UK).

After seeing Jacqi, it’s back to Portsmouth for a night, and then we head off for the first two of our business events of the trip, near Northampton on Saturday and in Norfolk on Sunday. Our plans for the latter have already gone awry, as it has been announced that the road from the hotel in Ipswich we’ve booked to the venue will be closed. It will be a long diversion on the morning of the event.

In the meantime, we have a couple of days free to explore. The plan was to go places I’d never been, so our first destination was Rye. I’ve not been there and always wanted to visit it. It was a disaster. The traffic was awful, and the parking was impossible, even after we found a spot. You needed an app on your phone to park, and we couldn’t get it to install, because the App wouldn’t text the access code to my US cell phone number (We’d got UK data only eSIMs, as we can call and text using our US numbers via data. And WhatsApp is all we need to get in touch with family and business contacts).

So, I left Rye in a huff. Next on the plan was the Seven Sisters, but somehow, we missed them, and settled on heading towards Hastings. I’ve never been to Hastings.

We’d not booked hotels in advance, so before we got there, Ginger did some searching and found what looked to be an excellent B&B in St. Leonards-on-Sea.

Luckily, there was a room available, and it was suggested we go eat while it was made ready. So, we ended up eating a very nice curry, followed by a walk along the seafront at St. Leonards.

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