A View away from the Trees: Littlehampton Revisited

It is not often we go away on a real holiday, it must be about 4 or 5 years since we last did so. We therefore decided that now was about the right time to spend a little time away and so we plumped for somewhere not too distant as my passport has expired. It costs a small fortune to get a new passport these days and the exchange rate for the pound has been pretty poor in most other countries lately.

We eventually decided to go to a place which we have often frequented in the past, especially when the children were young, as it was then our nearest seaside resort, Costa Del Littlehampton. We discovered it only takes between an hour and an hour and a half to get there as it it is only about 50 miles from home, so it seemed an ideal destination.

Arun Sands Hotel

We booked to stay at Arun Sands Hotel on River Terrace, which is about 5 minutes walk from the River Arun harbour front and about the same distance from the beach and funfair. In fact, it is virtually opposite the boating pool by the funfair. We arrived on a warm sunny Sunday afternoon and found free parking right outside our hotel on River Terrace. Having parked the car we went off to the beach until we were able to gain access to our hotel at 4.00 pm. It was a bit windy but very busy on the beach and we spent a short time getting into holiday mode before booking in at the hotel.

Littlehampton Beach

Once we booked in to Arun Sands we were impressed by its comfort and convenience, being so close to everything we needed, the beach, the harbour, the shops. In the evening we walked into the town via the harbour and looked to see how many shops were closed and how many were still flourishing. Woolworths was empty, of course, as was Gamleys, the toy shop we used to visit with the children at the entrance to the arcade. Otherwise, most of the shops in the town centre still seemed to be functioning as normal. A return to the town centre the following morning confirmed that it is quite a busy town and enjoying a lively trade with the local inhabitants and the tourists alike. We looked round Sussex Stationers bookshop, the Oxfam shop and did some food shopping. Later on we enjoyed sitting on a bench overlooking the River Arun by the hrabour and watching children fishing for crabs over the harbour fence using lines. This seemed to keep the youngsters and parents (in some cases grandparents) preoccupied for hours at a time and was quite good fun to watch. I'm not sure what they do with the tiny crabs they catch once they have swum around the tupperware container or bucket for a while, I expect they release them back into the river?

We enjoyed some real seaside cod and chips from one of the local shops by the harbour side and then went to spend some more time on the beach as the weather was nice and sunny if a bit on the windy side. We stayed there until about 6.00 pm when we returned to our comfortable hotel. After a bite to eat we spent the evening reading and watching news on TV and some other programmes. After so much fresh air we slept very well and awoke in time for a good English breakfast of bacon and eggs with toast and all the trimmings. We then went to meet my mother who had driven down from Elstead, Surrey to meet us at 10.30 and spend the day with us. We took her for a walk into town and showed her the various features which she hadn't seen for many years. She used to live in Littlehampton before I was born and moved away to Hastings in the early 1950s, which is where I was born.

My mother had not visited Littlehampton since about 2000 and noticed quite a few changes, notably the waterfront houses by the marina and the new Harvester restaurant and East Beach Cafe on the seafront. We went to have lunch at the new Harvester retaurant which was very pleasant and the service was good despite it being quite busy and their having trouble with the main card reading machine. After our late lunch we had a walk towards the Norfolk Road end of the seafront and sat on a bench opposite the miniature railway station from where the train sets off to Mewsbury Park. We sat and reminisced about old times and visits to Littlehampton and the things we used to get up to, the huge picnics, the swimming and building of sandcastles on the lovely Littlehampton sand. It never ceases to amaze me how far the tide goes out at Littlehampton, you wonder if it is ever going to find its way back again!

East Beach Cafe

We went for a cup of tea at the relatively new East Beach Cafe. Here is a brief article about it which appeared in the Guardian on 23rd. July, 2007, a few months after it opened.

"Strange. That's the word for it." So says ex-Royal Navy stoker Hardy, now driver of the electric train that plies the Littlehampton seafront, 80p each way. A bingo-winged passenger agrees: "Jolly beautiful, though - and good for the borough."

Thomas Heatherwick is a modern English free-thinking designer in the old-fashioned vein. He has gained renown for designs that cunningly combine the bleeding obvious with the outright inspired. His clients, the Murray family, live in Littlehampton, a pleasant, old-fashioned Sussex town-next-the-sea that was, until now, famous for not all that much. Now the two have come together to bring us the mould-breaking East Beach Cafe that's strange to some, striking to most, and the blueprint of coastal cafes to come, both in terms of cuisine and architecture.

After the showier charms of neigbouring Arundel and Bognor Regis, Littlehampton is a modestly prim, fruit-on-the-sideboard-and-nobody-ill-in-the-house sort of place. The wind carries a bright iodised tang; there are primary-coloured beach huts; the beach is mostly big stones and cracked shells; and - oh yes - there are seaman Hardy's 10-minute sea-front train trips.

The road into town swings you past perfectly nice homes of no single architectural style: arts and crafts, Tudorbethan, Edwardian masquerading as Victorian, 1980s bland brick. Where better than here to build a stretched, rippled, sharp-and-smooth, oxidised steel structure? Seen from the car park behind, East Beach Cafe seems initially to have been shorn from the walls of a New Mexico canyon. Adobe-brown, sculptural and arresting, it is, in the Great British tradition, carefully ignored by the caravanners and day-trippers paying and displaying.

Climb the few steps to one side, and there's a Teas For The Beach servery tacked on to one end and a spare, decked terrace, sheltered by an L-shaped perspex windbreak. There is a queue for the cafe. From the minute you walk in, you know that East Beach is not just right-on and right now, but smells right, looks right and feels right. The punters are determinedly non-trendy — last Tuesday lunchtime the place was packed with a crowd of all ages, incomes and styles. There was also none of the smug metro attitude that often accompanies smart new openings as everyone was too busy enjoying the food, drink and view.

East Beach Cafe's menu achieves the smart trick of keeping everyone happy. There are bacon butties with good local bacon and good local bread. Buttered field mushrooms on toast for those mornings when you need comforting. Fish and chips, of the impeccably fresh and crisply executed kind. Bowls of mussels and big juicy burgers. Dover sole with caramelised endives if you're feeling posh. Muesli for brunch, Pinot Grigio for lunch, Pimms for sunsets. Dark and Stormy - demerera rum and ginger beer cocktails - for when it's, you know, dark and stormy.

The place opened less than a month ago, the kitchen's already on song, and the room, which feels like sitting inside a light-filled seashell, is delightful. The only thing that's strange is that there aren't already hundreds of East Beach Cafes to brighten our coastline and breathe fresh life into our Ryanair-depleted resorts.

We sat out on some decking in some metal chairs provided and enjoyed our tea before returning to the West end of the seafront and then to the harbour front where we sat and did some more reminiscing and putting the world to rights. My mother eventually left about 6.30 for her hour long drive back to Elstead and we went back to our hotel for another evening of relaxing reading and watching some news on TV.

The Wednesday turned out to be the hottest day of the week, with temperatures soaring to 29C inland and probably about 26C where we were on the South coast. We went on to the beach for most of the day where I think there were probably about 3 times as many people as the previous day. We got quite sunburnt during the course of the day and made sure that we drank quite regularly to avoid dehydration. We had a lot of people all round us and many seemed to have come just for a day trip rather than a holiday. In fact, in our hotel, nobody was booked in for more than four nights, we were the longest staying, having booked in for 7 nights! Were we brave or stupid? I don't care, we really enjoyed it as a break!

On Thursday we decided it was time to explore some other places within easy striking distance of Littlehampton. We set off in the direction of Arundel and went round the bypass then headed off right towards Amberley. We drove through Amberley and headed onwards through Storrington and then set off back in the Littlehampton direction. Instead of going back to Littlehampton we carried on along the A27 which became busier as we got towards Chichester, we then headed off in the direction of Selsey.

A Selsey Beach House

Selsey Lifeboat Station

At Selsey there was a large free car park right by the beach where we left the car and went for a walk along the seafront. After a picnic lunch in the car (the weather was cloudy, windy and cool) we drove back to Littlehampton via Bognor, where we drove past the new Ocean Hotel.

Ocean Hotel, Bognor

Here is a short article they published in The Sun about this new hotel on 24th. January, 2009

As the credit crunch forces many of us to forego foreign breaks, this new resort could not have come at a better time. It has 200 stylish rooms, a modern restaurant and bar, plus an ultra-luxe spa.

It follows the success of the Shoreline Hotel, which opened at Bognor in 2007 and has been a huge hit. The Ocean takes the chic-on-the-cheap concept even further, with accommodation that is perfect for families.

All rooms have funky colour-change lighting in a floor-to-ceiling headboard behind the double bed, plus flat-screen TVs, squishy modern chairs and floor-to-ceiling windows.

More than 75 per cent of them have private balconies overlooking the award-winning beach or rolling South Downs.

In family rooms, a separate kids' den has another flat-screen TV and two full-size single beds with blue glowlighting. Many family rooms also have a sofabed.

Other treats at the hotel include room service and a family-friendly restaurant and coffee bar. It's pricier than Butlins' traditional self-catering apartments - but great value.

A room for two adults, and two kids aged two to 14, with South Downs views, for seven nights this summer, is from £1,120. That's based on Butlins' Schools Out summer deal, from August 21.

Camp revamp ... Butlins' stylish new Ocean Hotel

The same room for three nights at October half-term is just £408. And the full-on facilities of Butlins are a few minutes' walk from the hotel.

New for 2009 are live shows from Looney Tunes characters, from May half-term onward. At the Urban Academy teenagers can learn breakdancing, street-dancing, beat-boxing or Cheerleading, the latest keep-fit craze from New York.

And the High Ropes Aerial Trekking Course was such a hit at Butlins' Minehead resort last year that it is being introduced at Bognor in 2009.

Butlins boss Richard Bates told me this week: "The modern-era Butlins is a unique mix of quality accommodation and entertainment that guests love.

"And 97 per cent say we offer brilliant value for money. With the amount of choice on offer this is going to be the year to be here."

The next day, which was Friday, we spent another nice day exploring Littlehampton town centre and harbour and spent some time on the beach. We had another nice fish and chip lunch outdoors by the harbour and the cod was up to its usual wonderful standard.

Arundel

On the Saturday we went for a day trip to Arundel which is only about a ten minute drive from Littlehampton. Here we enjoyed browsing round a large antique and second-hand shop, a wonderful bookshop on four floors and a shop selling artistic prints and copperplate etchings. We bought 2 fine copperplate etchings of ships for which we got a good discount. We then had chocolate fudge cake and coffee in a medium sized coffee shop which was absolutely delicious. There was an open air festival going on for the day in Arundel so we also enjoyed some live rock music and watching jugglers in action in the High Street. Arundel is a beautiful West Sussex town which is well worth a visit. For those who haven't been there before there is a large castle and a cathedral which are interesting to visit.

Arundel Castle viewed from the River Arun

Arundel Cathedral

Sadly, on the Sunday we had to return home from Littlehampton. However, we made the most of our holiday by travelling inland via the beautiful Bury Hill through Petworth to visit some relatives in Woking. We stopped for a short while in Petworth and then continued on our leisurely journey along the A283, admiring the beauty of the West Sussex and Surrey countryside and small towns and villages en route.

Bury Hill, West Sussex

Petworth

Although I said it was sad to leave Littlehampton, it is always pleasant to return home after a time away, even if it was a relatively short holiday. I hope to write my next posting 'from the trees' as usual.