Beachy Head

Beachy Head, in this weather, does nothing to unseat the exploding Anglophilia in Julie and I. In fact, after a stressful few days in the hustle and the heat, the sun and breeze over these white cliffs breathe renewed idealism. Not only do we love the people, the literature, and the history, but the weather’s great, too!

“It’s always like this,” our innkeeper winks. Clearly it is, because only about 30% of the people on the beach own bathing suits.

Eastbourne is a seaside town that looks a lot like Brighton, but where Brighton bears many old remnants of its royal resort days and much more recent remnants of an overactive twenty-something nightlife, Eastbourne seems like a place one could actually live. In fact, that sounds rather tempting (see paragraph 1). The owners of our B&B tell us about their previous life in London, commuting an hour and a half to work. Once their son was born, and they saw him for approximately thirty minutes a day, they decided to pull chocks and move south. That was three years ago.

“This is the sunniest place in England,” he says, the same wink telling us that doesn’t actually mean much, “and it’s a great place to raise a family.” He’d answered the door when we arrived carrying his two-year-old daughter. They have a play area out back and keep their little bikes in the breakfast/common room. If you’re a parent looking for a hotel north of the equator and west of Vladivostok, stay here.

He urges us to hit the beach, the pier, the bike trails, the hiking trails, seven or ten of his favorite restaurants, and waxes poetic about the light over the Downs in the evening. We want to do it all. We’re here for the next fifteen hours.

The beaches in Brighton and Eastbourne are stony, which suits Aryn okay once her feet get used to the uncomfortable feeling of gravel shifting beneath her. Best part about stony beaches? An endless supply of rocks to throw into the waves. Can you hit France, Aryn? The water is icy, freezes our knees, and yet we see a handful of intrepid bathers floating out there. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go outside at noon in Arizona, and only mad Englishmen swim the Channel in May. Aryn, time to go. Aryn… Aryn! Time to go. Aryn. One more rock. Okay, let’s go.

We stroll the pier and the waterfront for a bit, content in the sun, the genial crowd, the hazy view of France, the characters that seems to be on every beach. Soon the sun begins to drift toward the Downs, and we set off in search of white cliffs.

What with the sickness, the traffic, lack of sleep, the worry about the sickness and lack of sleep, and so on, this trip up to now was good but tough. One of those glad-we-went-but trips where the memory maybe serves better than the actual moment. As we crest the first Down, however, that all fades.

We stare with wide eyes, breathing in one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen.

Our innkeeper was too prosaic. We’re all of us, every one (and I’m standing in England now, mind you), too prosaic to do justice to these cliffs, these fields, this sunlight. Especially this sunlight. But one has to try.

Imagine, if you will, a stretch of the purest green fields, waves of breeze blowing across them right up to the edge of the world, which drops away with no warning and no safety gate. Viewed at an angle, with the sun to your back, you see the white cliffs bulging out beneath the grass, a glow the colour of queen Jadis’ cheek and no warmer rising from the chalk to contend with the tenderest of sunsets. On your hands and knees you peer over the edge, because you can, and the blue waves churn chalky dust a hundred metres off shore. Just past the chalk line, in the pure blue of the Channel, a sailboat sits, content that it, not you, has the best view.

I could walk here forever. Julie and I make plans to do just that, in fact, with a tentative date set twelve years hence. A steady stream of travelers has the same idea, yet the Downs are far from crowded. I hear Russian, French, German, several incarnations of English. Asian tourists roll by in buses, enroute to or from what must be a more scenic bluff, a better lighthouse, softer grass. I can’t imagine such a place. I’m lighter than air, and this air is the lightest. Maybe it’s the unexpectedness, the fact that we came here tired, not expecting such splendour, but I’m willing to say that the Beachy Head cliffs in this eternal sunset are in the top two or three most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

So Julie and I continue to grow into unabashed Anglophiles. Nearly all of my fictional friends were born here: Gandalf and the Hobbits, Aslan and Shasta and Puddleglum, Holmes and Watson, Harry and Ron and Hermione, Jeeves and Wooster, Aubrey and Maturin, Sebastian Flyte and Charles Rider, Arthur and Lancelot, Hal and Falstaff, Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Bond, Copperfield, Miss Bennet, even Peeta. And on and on. The fascination grows as my interest in history expands beyond the more famous monarchs: Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Victoria. Kipling and the literature of empire especially appeal to me now, as I act the master in a foreign land. Eliot, my favorite poet, wasn’t born here but got here as fast as he could. London's mid-May romp two years ago was, like Beachy Head, fortuitously timed to surprise and delight. Ought I to embrace it, Nelson’s pole pointed unashamedly at the heavens, last year’s random riots of unknown origin? Weather no one dares speak well of 11 months a year? This evening, in the glow, sitting on soft dry grass atop a chalky cliff, I think I will.

If you need us, we’ll be swimming in tidal pools below the gleaming chalk like the retired Sherlock Holmes. We’ll be strolling up and down the South Downs way like a thousand thousand walkers young and old. You’ll find us at the Beachy Head hotel, sipping golden ale in a perfect sunset with a mushroom pie and berries and cream. We’ll be inside, reading old or newish British lit and denying the rain, like our British seatmates do when our plan lands back in a chilly and sodden Naples.

Bath

We went to Bath as a pilgrimage. Mentioned in a number of works of literature, Bath plays probably its most prominent role in several Jane Austen novels. Julie’s a Jane Austen fan. I like Jane Austen, but Julie’s got the bug, has read all her books (including, on this trip, finishing Lady Susan in the bath, in Bath), has read her biography, read and watched Being Jane, watched the Jane Austen Book Club. Netflix has been great about getting us some of the masterpiece theater productions. It’s clearly a testament to Austen’s wide, enduring appeal that there is so much material to consume based on her novels. We mix with other pilgrims at the Jane Austen center on Gay St., the house a few steps from where she lived.

The center of Bath is small enough for Aryn to walk it, although we regret not bringing a stroller she can use shortly after the second consecutive day of 80+ degree cloudless heat dawns. British-made thermometers don’t go that high. Brits see that kind of heat as often as Neapolitans see snow. I’d observed before how when the sun comes out in England there’s a nonstop party on the lawn. Take that party to the streets—that is, the roadways between Brighton and Bath—and you nearly triple a two and a half hour trip and arrive hot, irritated, and exhausted to a south-facing hotel room on a sunny street below the Royal Crescent. Add no A/C or airflow through that room (which was pretty nice, actually—found it on www.visitbath.co.uk), and you wake up still hot but now worried about the health of your two ill-sleeping children.

Note to parents travelling in Bath: down the hill from the Royal Crescent and to the right is the largest playground ever, with jungle gyms of all shapes and sizes, a merry-go-round, and a skatepark. Also nearby: wide open fields, wooded walkways, botanical gardens, fire pits, and probably some other stuff we didn’t see. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

So we roll into the Jane Austen museum after eating breakfast with about twenty girls on a bachelorette weekend, Analee in the front-pack and Aryn walking. Aryn does well, digs the period costumes and the tea sets and the little biographical video (which gave her a great seating area to color—sorry, colour—on). The girls try on hats and capes, I read about naval action off of Minorca in the foreign column of a newspaper on display, and homage is paid. The temperature rises, and so does Aryn’s. Analee naps a little.

On the way out, smiling, we notice a sign seeking a part-time guide at the museum. Julie’s non-maternal career ambitions have just gone from dauntingly vague to impossibly specific.

The main attraction in Bath is, of course, the bath. The Romans “discovered” the hot springs here (in the way, say, that Columbus discovered America) and constructed a spa surrounding the reputed healing waters. After the Romans, the baths were neglected for a time until Queen Victoria bathed here and was reputedly cured of her infertility. The rest, as they say, was history.

The audio guide gives you an option for the regular narration, some comments by the one and only Bill Bryson, and a kid’s version. Aryn gets a huge kick out of the kid’s version and loves being able to punch in the numbers at each stop. “Which number is next, daddy?” Lots of people are touching the warm water, but when Aryn does, a staff member comes up and warn us of the multitude of diseases that thrive in the open-air pool. Awesome, we think, and her with a fever already. Purell. Maybe a fifty-pence sip of the (clean) healing waters in the pump room will help? Mmm. Coppery.

Any reader of Austen will be well aware of the town’s reputation as a destination of sorts for pleasure seekers, those who use the baths as an excuse to come, see, and be seen. Combine that with the general British need to party when sun the doth shine, and you’ll get a sense of the atmosphere here. The front five rows at the street performance are, by the performers’ design, college girls. Swarms of their female classmates, bachelorettes, the bachelor parties somewhat creepily shadowing them, the odd tour group, middle-age couples just having a good time. Would her satirical eye look as scornfully on these twittering masses as on her own peers?

The Jane Austen center’s tea room barely gets us in, and turns away the twenty or so people behind us. Analee is the center of attention, and plays with (i.e. drops on the floor) about fifty of their shiniest spoons. Aryn sips her mint tea once, twice, and her feverish eyes roll back into her head. She’s down for the count. “Let her sleep,” says Julie, “my cucumber sandwiches just arrived.” We’re enjoying the tea party alongside a thin, lone girl with a book and a fancy dress. She eats her cake, reads a bit, sneaks a glance at Analee. She folds up her book and leaves, silent. I can’t tell if she’s sadly or splendidly alone, but I suspect the latter.

 When ordering our dessert that night at the bar, Analee meets a bachelor party. I relay a story to the bartender about how I once saw a mom set her baby on the bar late at night, and how sternly I judged her. Analee, from her seat on the bar, reaches out to try to pull that huge lever that would pour me a delicious local hard cider. The bachelor party pulls the groom-to-be away from someone so pure and wholesome. He has time for that kind of thing tomorrow, they say.

Bath meets our pilgrim’s expectations, although we run out of children’s Advil and spend large portions of time lying about in a hot room, resting and allowing the children to rest. Aryn’s cough keeps everyone awake, and the heat further drains. The sun is up at like four, and it’s pretty restless from then on. The sun doesn’t set ‘til like eleven, so it’s restless until then. We hardly expected this kind of warmth (predictions aligned with the yearly average in the 60s), and didn’t pack for it. The Brits never need A/C, and the previous occupants of our room actually battled 40s and 50s weather only a week before. Hard to fault the UK for having better weather than Naples. Anyways, all that merely to illustrate a day in the life of traveling parents. It’s totally awesome, and totally hard. Bring it.

 Less traffic on the way to Beachy Head, even though the sun still blazes and the vintage cars are still out in force. And the convenience store along the highway sells kids’ ibuprofen in individual packets. Also Krispy Kreme donuts. God save the Queen!