Touring West and East Sussex in a motorhome - a mini break

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 Day Five

Coffee, castle and cream tea.

I didn’t correctly level the motorhome last night on our arrival at Red Orchard farm and we paid the price. The sink wouldn’t drain properly and during the night it became rather ‘wiffy’. That will teach me! Mag is very good about it all.

Today the forecast is rain in the morning, followed by some rain around midday and then some more rain for the afternoon and evening! We decide to head down to the seafront at Bexhill. We would have gone to Hastings but they are clearly motorhome unfriendly. Every car park we researched last night has height barriers, so Hastings, you lost our custom!

We park on West Parade – plenty of on road parking although be warned, there is a very interesting ‘camber’ to the road on the left-hand side and a motorhome only just fits the width of the marked lines. £1.70 for four hours we think is quite reasonable. We come from the west Country where many places charge £1 per hour!

Coffee and the papers along with toast and bacon sandwich are consumed at a very nice little café on the main shopping street called ‘Cavills’. A warm welcome, nice coffee and food and care give to the clientele regulars; and there are many of them who troop in during the time we are there, for breakfast and conversation. A great community aware café worthy of support.  

A quick stroll around the town shops; there aren’t that many and then we head out to Pevensey Castle to make good use of our English Heritage annual membership. Here, parking is easy, there are designated coach/motorhome bays although two thoughtless people decided to park cars in two of the bays when there were at least forty spaces available thirty metres away in the overflow car park.

Pevensey castle proves to be quite remarkable. A huge roman fort with a medieval keep in one corner of it. The coast is now over 1500m away but in roman times the fort was on a peninsula and the sea was a mere 30m from the wall base. Receding sea levels, eh?

 A history stretching over 16 centuries, one of Britain’s southern defence coastal castles and one of the last and possibly the strongest of the Roman ‘Saxon shore’ forts, this castle was also the landing place of William the Conqueror’s army in 1066 and where he built his first temporary defences.

The Roman fort was called Anderida and it was built around 290 AD with the new D shaped wall towers, a new feature of Roman fortifications. It was one of nine forts around the south coast commanded by the Comes Litoris Saxonici per Britanniam (the count of the Saxon shore).

After the withdrawal of the Romans the fort was used by the Anglo-Saxons. Fast forward to 1087 and the natural harbour at Pevensey facing Normandy made it a popular naval base for William’s ships.

Developed several times during the medieval period and used as a prison for James 1^st, we fast forward to WWII where it was used as a garrison for Canadian troops.

I have of course rushed through centuries of history and you can read a much fuller and far more interesting summary of the castle’s history on the English Heritage pages about Pevensey castle here https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/pevensey-castle/history/  .

After a couple of hours strolling the castle and listening to the audio commentaries, we return to Bryony, offload the E bikes and cycle back along NCN route 2 to Bexhill and then on to Glyne Gap. The return ride is wet but we can’t complain as we have managed to escape the showers thus far.

A cream tea at the little café below the castle walls is most welcome. Are you a jam or cream first person? Of course, you are jam first. The Cornish way is correct and so much more civilised than that Devon wishy washy stuff of cream first. The true mark of a civilised, educated, sophisticated person – jam first!

There is plenty of parking outside the cafe and at the time of visiting no height restriction barriers.