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.