I'm not much of one for New Year's resolutions, they always seem to come with intimations of failure in their wake. However, I do try to keep up my resolve during the year to do things. One of those is to walk by the seaside reasonably regularly, for the good of my health and for the good of my inner self. Today our sea was really rather excitable, with the wind whistling so hard across the water that the sturdy railings were buzzing and vibrating in their housings. Great rafts of sea foam were collected, trembling and undulating on the shoreline or blowing across the promenade.
Definitely no boats, or folk, on the water today
Dogs with their trusty walkers were at serious risk of losing their ears and the sunshine was sparkling in and out of the racing dark clouds.
The seagulls really seemed to be playing joyfully in the buffeting air
Walking in an easterly direction was aided by the following wind, but walking back to the car was very invigorating indeed. I arrived home windswept and freshened and wandered into the sitting room just in time to catch this spot of calmness as our resident woodpecker helped himself to a little lunch.
I expect he has tucked himself away somewhere safe now as the forecast rain is beginning to lash against the windowpanes.
It is getting harder to keep up the motivation to go out and get exercise with these frigid days of winter. Yesterday I was all but resigned that my walk was too much effort, especially as the snow began to drift down again, but I gave myself a Good Talking To. I had noticed that sunset and low tide would coincide, so despite gathering clouds I told myself I would regret it if I didn't pop down to the seaside just to see - after all I didn't have to get out of the car did I?
And, as the wise Sandra Brownlee says "you have to begin ... that's all you have to do" and once you've begun things flow from there, though I often forget this and get stuck in "not doing". So I hopped in the car, grateful for the heated steering wheel and seat, and drove the short way down to the seafront, snow hissing on the windscreen, to see what I could find.
There weren't many folk there, but the tide was low and the sun was glowing from behind the snow clouds, shining on the wet sand all the way round the bay to Eastbourne, with Beachy Head and the Downs, dusted with snow, in the distance
Folk were walking along the shoreline, dogs prancing and dancing on the sand
And the De La Warr Pavilion was looking rosy in the evening light.
Well worth the effort of just beginning; beauty to delight, the brisk evening air to refresh and a walk to invigorate and add to my step count for the day.
It has been very wild and windy the past couple of days. We are lucky enough to be in the south where the rain has been dramatic, but not damaging and as we live on the top of a hill we are unlikely to be flooded, though the pond has been rather full.
Because we are all constrained by the current restrictions I have been making the most of our lovely seafront for my hour's walks. I was wildly proud of myself earlier this month when I managed three miles of brisk walking. No great shakes for my fitter friends, but it made me very happy. Most days though it is about a mile, and I have been interested by how many other folk have been down there too - I suspect fitness devices across the country have recorded far more steps than usual over the past year as we all get our allocated daily exercise.
Today and yesterday have been enlivened by Storm Christoph. Yesterday was particularly blustery, and as I was trying to capture the whooshy sea foam swirling at the shoreline, what should come past but this fine machine, known at home as a wokka wokka. They fly up the coast from Odiham and have been seen much more frequently along the shoreline than in past times. A rather nice rumour suggests that "they" have changed the pattern of their training sorties to cheer us up in these difficult times. A lovely thought, and perhaps it is true.
Today was less grey, but no less windy. With a low tide there was no foaming froth flying up the the promenade, but there were folk out enjoying themselves in the waves - how marvelous to be fit, strong and confident enough to trust yourself to the water and fly across it, skipping the peaks of the waves with your rainbow sail high in the air.
I was rather glad these clouds were far out to sea, and gave me time to scurry home before they dropped their water on us.
When I go for walks I have two options, to drive somewhere and walk, or to go out of my front door and see where the pavement takes me. I tend to do both in equal measures; sometimes I am treated to the wild rushing sea and views from our seafront, where the pavement is level and I can get a reasonable pace going; on other days I wander around the neighbourhood, peering at gardens, wondering about who lived here in past times, what this space looked like. Every so often something catches the eye and one thinks, hmmmm, where did that come from?
In this case, it is a rather lovely line of trees, Scots pine on one side, chestnut and other natives on the other. They are big trees, as you can see, much older than the surrounding houses and obviously planted, but by whom and what for?
They soar over one, and are home to a bevy of crows
They sit in a long green open space, called Ashcombe Park, between several modern developments. Folk walk along here with their dogs, conkers litter the ground in Autumn
So I did a little digging about and found a rather wonderful thing called "Bexhill Open Street Map" which has an amazing range of overlays on a standard map of the town. From this I can see that at one stage this space was open fields, belonging to Birchington Farm
then between 1899 and this 1909 map, Effingham House appears
and within a very short space of time, it becomes Effingham House School, run by Miss Ismay, who applied to the district council for a temporary gymnasium in April 1919, and shown here on a 1955 OS map. By 1911 the school had 37 boarders, aged 11 - 16 from as far afield as India, Holland and Argentina as well as the more predictable London, Yorkshire and Somerset. There were 5 academic staff, two matrons and 9 general staff.
Here you can see the line of trees in the aerial photo from 1967, angling across the middle of the image,
You can find pictures of both the school and their uniform in this Bexhill Museum publication from an exhibition they had about Bexhill's schools
And finally, to my delight, I found this 1954 advert for "Girl Golfers" at Effingham House School. You can see those lovely trees in the background.
Isn't it amazing how much history we can find, just by looking in different places
We have been encouraged to take exercise throughout this pandemic, for the good of both physical and mental health. Since buying a fitness band when I was still in work, I have made a concerted effort to increase the number of steps I do each day, when not constrained by higher levels of pain or exhaustion than normal. My first target, back in around 2017, and still deskbound, was 2000 steps a day. It has built since then to the point where I regularly reach my 5000 a day target and occasionally go well beyond. That won't sound like much to anyone with any sensible level of fitness, but for me it is an achievement, and tells me that I can probably manage more as long as I keep pushing, remain patient and accept that sometimes I won't even mange half those 5000 steps in a day.
We are fortunate where we live to have the sea within walking distance, and also very benign suburban streets where one can be aware of birdsong, the wind shushing through a hedge, low raking sunlight illuminating the leaves, and all sorts of interesting gardens to peer at.
sunny skies or windy, the sea is always good to watch
there are fairies and gnomes of you look closely, I wonder what it's like when the lights come on!
There are so many interesting things to see when you are looking.
With the good of my health in mind, and with the help of the fitness app, I can now set myself distance targets and have managed nearly two miles on two different days. A long walk for me, with the occasional stop for breath catching and general realignment of aching bones!
Yesterday, in line with my commitment to walk regularly, I took myself to the sea again. I marched down the hill lickety split, as the sun was low in the sky and I wanted to be able to watch it dip behind the bulk of the Downs. I got there just in time to see its disc gradually slip down, down, down behind their dark mass.
The tide was out, and the shore stretched like a rippled mirror in front of me
small stones and sculpted sand bringing texture to the reflections
and a pair of very happy little dogs came racing beside the waves, delighted to be out in the evening air with a willing slave to throw ball for them
I really must make sure I do this often. it does the soul good as well as the body
I have made a tentative pact with myself to walk down to the seaside every other day in an attempt to get myself both fitter and slimmer. Tentative because I have a pretty poor track record when it comes to getting fit, but the slow creep over and under 11 stone horrifies me and, having been quite poorly recently, I figure I owe myself a bit of a tune up. The walk is downhill in one direction, and uphill all the way back (obviously!). The distance (according to Google) is around 2 miles, and is about the extent of my comfort zone when it comes to walking, so a good thing to be doing just now. The pleasure of pushing myself just a bit on the way back is enormous; when we first moved here I couldn't walk back up the hill at any pace without a calf muscle threatening to tear and I'd limp for days afterwards. Being able now to stride (and huff and puff) uphill is exhilarating. I smile wryly at the joggers who overtake me and think to myself that my knees are probably happier than theirs. On the way there and back I watch people's gardens, blink at some of the larger houses with their posh cars parked outside, say hello to passers by and generally enjoy just being. When I get to the bottom of the hill, there is the wonderful sea and the view along the coast to Beachy Head.
Today I saw
the sun breaking through amazing deep dark clouds over the sea
beach treasures, washed up by a spate of recent heavy winds and high tides
rust wood and stones
and sea smoothed groynes
On the way back, there is a garden which has a wonderful set of small leaved shrubs, all pruned to rolling shapes - far too artistic to call a hedge, though I guess that's what it is. It gives me pleasure each time I pass it, but my pleasure was greatly increased today by the sight of an elderly lady with her hedge trimmers, clip clip clipping away. I stopped for a chat, discovered that she was 87, had a 93 year old disabled husband and didn't believe in "giving in". She was delightful, was very grateful to me for stopping and complimenting her on her hedge, and I walked on with a smile on my face and a spring in my step - glad to have been able to thank her for the pleasure her pruning was giving. I always feel that our front gardens are the gift we give to passers by and most of the time we don't know whether they are bringing a touch of brightness to the world or not.
.JPG)
