Brighton parade and Beachy Head

With mum vis­it­ing for the week­end, it was another excuse to explore Brighton’s lanes and this week­end only, watch the pride parade as it passed through the town cen­tre. Then on Sun­day we trav­elled East to see the cliffs at Beachy Head.

Up and out early (for a Sat­ur­day at least), we mean­dered through the North Laine, shop­ping for books and sun­glasses, stop­ping for some cyber candy, pass­ing through the pavil­ion gar­dens and halt­ing at the parade to see the LGBT floats go by, one by one, to the tunes of Katy Perry’s “I kissed a girl”, Abba and so on.

For lunch we parked our­selves at the ever tasty Food­ilic (pro­nounced ilick or ilich?), for roasted but­ter­nut squash, greek salad, lamb casse­role, and the rest of the all you can eat buf­fet. Excel­lent value for £6.95.

Walk­ing off the gut, we con­tin­ued along, down to the sea front, past the west pier and up mont­pe­lier, with a brief stop at Taj for some essentials.

With it being the first day of the foot­ball sea­son, we caught the scores and kept an eye on the cricket before hav­ing an epic game of Set­tlers of Catan, (I’ll trade a sheep for two wheat and some ore — geek over­load?), I shan’t say who won, because that would be boasting.

On Sun­day we took a day trip, east along the south coast. Down the A27, past the Seven Sis­ters and Bir­ling Gap to Beachy Head, with all its stun­ning views of dis­tant Brighton and Eastbourne.

Sit­ting on benches look­ing out across the bay, we dined on a quickly packed bread, saucis­son and cheese pic­nic (with unwieldy bread knife and an inquis­i­tive jack­daw watch­ing us drop bread­crumbs everywhere).

A small museum showed us how the light­house was built, it had gone all out on its exhibits, with but­tons that sink ships or make sounds of sea birds.

After the enlight­en­ment of how to build a light­house in the sea, we took the path around the steep cliff to see the won­der, peer­ing over the edge and feel­ing a lit­tle ver­tigo. We were som­bre at the mark­ings and trib­utes to those that had jumped.

As the sun shone on the sea, it glis­tened a gor­geous laguna blue, and I mar­velled at the tran­quil­lity of the place. It’d be a great place to catch the sunset.

At the busy pub we fought off wasps (trap­ping some in glasses) to eat our sug­ary desserts before head­ing home, this time going through New Haven, Seaford and via Brighton Marina.

It wouldn’t be Sun­day with­out drink­ing a cool beer and catch­ing the end of a Bond movie, and after watch­ing the invin­ci­ble Bond jump croc­o­dile backs in “Live and Let Die”, I served up a sweet potato, lentil and chicken creamy curry.

Jason Reitman’s “Up in the air” was the per­fect end to the week­end, and the sound­track will be with me all week.