An Autumn weekend in Sussex
This weekend was the date quoted for completion of our building project. Though we are clearly in the final push, there is some way to go and it was no hardship to leave everyone to it on Friday and escape for a few days.
We were invited to a lunchtime do at The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, to celebrate 45 years since our dear friends met. They met on more or less the same day as my Hero and I, so I guess we were celebrating too! Since their party was on my birthday weekend, we had another great reason to push the boat out a bit so booked ourselves a lovely hotel and headed off early Friday morning.
The weather here has been incredibly wet and though we escaped the worst that Storm Babet could throw at us, the journey was “interesting”. We’d already decided to stay off the motorway and take it easy along ordinary roads through Wiltshire, Hampshire and Surrey.
It’s not an area either of us knows well and we were both surprised to see the sign Ermin Way even though the long, straight road clearly had Roman foundations. I was muddling it up with Ermine Street, a more familiar Roman road and altogether different from this one.
Driving eastwards, around Basingstoke and into Surrey, I really was on unfamiliar territory. The wide open landscape came as a surprise at times, for I always forget about the large areas of open countryside in this part of the country.
As I reviewed my photos taken somewhere in the Surrey Hills I wondered if I’d captured some kind of meteorological phenomenon there right of centre, but a closer look reveals that it’s simply a bit of vegetation and the reflection of my sleeve. Oh dear! But those skies continued to draw my eye. Were we going to be in for some rough weather?
Thankfully once nearer to Eastbourne, the skies above the South Downs were a little less threatening. We always see this landscape as the one in the paintings of Eric Ravilious and welcomed this last part of the journey, by now very much looking forward to getting there!
There , in this case, was Alfriston, a charming village a short drive from Eastbourne and one where we had read of somewhere interesting to stay. In fact, we’d watched the TV series about the renovations at The Star Inn, under the same ownership as Tresanton, where Amy and Edward had married a couple of years ago and we were glad of a reason to come and stay.
I will write another post about The Star Inn, which was absolutely superb and I might stretch to a post about Alfriston itself too. However, returning home to a building site demands one or two priorities right now, not to mention a little bit of unpacking, so bear with…there is more to come! For now, relax in the comfort of Room 30 and enjoy the peace and quiet of the late afternoon.
That evening the storm passed through, the old sash windows rattled and the curtains were wafting in the draught. We were reminded of all the reasons why we just replaced every one of the original windows here at home and felt thankful that we did!
