The bonfire societies have their own parade in St Leonards/Hastings each year, or they used to. Ending with a bonfire on the beach. It is certainly memorable. One year when I was there, there was a float with what appeared to be British soldiers (think uniform from that Sean Bean thing era) and blacked-up white people in chains. A homage to the slave trade? I don't know quite what was going through their heads.
I was there for the Hastings one a couple of years ago. I don't remember anything quite like that. I do recall a giant coronavirus being blown up on the beach, which was kind of cathartic at the time.
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I know they exist elsewhere in the country but beach huts were one of the things that I found exotic when I first moved to the south. Rows and rows of beach huts.
Now, there’s a thing. I always imagined cock horse was an antique way of saying stallion. Maybe stallion was a bit Frenchified. But a plaque in the town suggests it’s an alternative name for hobby horse. Looking back, I remember seeing hobby horse illustrations accompanying the poem in children’s books, but I must have just internalised those as child-friendly whimsy.
At the aptly named Gravesend I thinkJust learned that Matoaka’s grave (Pocahontas/“Rebecca Rolfe”) is an hour and a half away.
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I will. Thanks. I’ll be resting the next couple of days for sure.
Aye, no disrespect to their end, but I don’t think Gravesend is worth a three hour round trip.
Not to mention all the old dockyards
