A Birthday Jaunt to Beachy Head

Photo from The Londonist website

We took a couple of days to celebrate Kevin's birthday, but my main surprise for him was an excursion to Eastbourne and Beachy Head. We had last visited Beachy Head in 1982, when our son Aaron was 12. Then, we had marveled at the fact that there were no guardrails on the high cliffs, and found that even today there are only a few places marked by low wire fences with warning signs. 

We took the train to Eastbourne from Victoria Station, about an hour-and-a-half out of London. Eastbourne has that air of so many English seaside towns with its Victorian architecture and a long pier that echoes with the simple pleasures of an earlier era. We had a picnic lunch beside the sea before beginning our excursions. 

We visited the local tourist information office to ask about a path outside of town that Kevin had read about, which leads along the base of the white cliffs that stretch along the coast. 

"We don't recommend that," the neatly dressed information agent said. 

"Well, we just want to walk on the beach there and see if we can find any fossils," we explained.

"We don't recommend that," she said again. But she did help us figure out how to get there nonetheless, telling us how to get to the tea shop at the cliff's base. It was a taxi ride away, but the taxis in Eastbourne are cheap.

We saw why the information office was reluctant to send us to the cliffs when we saw how many chunks had fallen onto the shore. We kept our distance from the cliff face.

We found some flints and a fossilized shell, but it was too heavy to take with us.

After poking about the shore for awhile, we decided it was time to head up top, so with the help of the tea shop (since my mobile phone plan wouldn't work there), we summoned a taxi and headed up to the highest clifftops. Formed of diatoms, eons ago, and lifted from the seabed, the cliffs offer dramatic vistas.

Because of the position of the sun, I was not able to get a photo of the lighthouse below (pictured at the top of this post), but we were able to view it.

Then, as we walked further on, we encountered a scene with police and aid workers. We saw them pull a young man back from the cliff's edge, place him on a gurney, and put him in an ambulance. 
That was the troubled young man that I wrote the poem about in a previous posting. (I did not want to juxtapose that serious thought with this more casual entry.  Sadly, these beautiful high cliffs are sometimes chosen by suicidal people. We were grateful that this time, at least, someone was saved.)

We could also see areas where the cliffs are continuing to erode, worn away into small depressions that collect rain water, expanding and contracting, until they at last break away.

Not far away is a lighthouse on the top of the cliff that has been moved, because it was in danger of toppling itself.

We counted ourselves fortunate to have visited on a day of sun and celebrated Kevin's birthday dinner at the clifftop pub.

It was another grand day out!

Note: We have now returned home, but I still have a few more posts to make to complete this online journal. We will cherish the memories that we made during these two months.