An American in Britain

In our tour of coastal towns, we stopped at Littlehampton.  It’s interesting to note that the flavour of each beach town has been very different. 

Littlehampton was somewhat busy, but not as much as I would have expected.  Not that it was very touristy, but with the amusements, I thought it would be more crowded.  Perhaps, the day was not warm enough or calm enough.  It was quite windy (I could not keep my hat on) and the wind was slightly chilly.

There were many sailboats out and several people were parasurfing, kids were paddling in part shingle/part sandy beaches.  There happened to be a fair/fete of some sort on the greens as well.  (They had a tug-of-war contest between what sounded like groups from London and Crawley and one side – needless to say, the winning side! –  had an anchor who looked to weigh in at 400 lbs, or nearly 30 stones.)

The highlight of the kids’ day was the amusement park.  This was better than the ones at Brighton or any of the towns.  It had the log ride!  They loved getting that splash at the end.  Of course, it’s costly, but we bought the discount tickets in the gift shop and they each had 5 rides – they both saved two rides for the log.

We enjoyed watching the boats come in, especially one that looked like a replica pirate ship.  It was the Alice of Rochester, apparently a barge based in Chichester, which can be chartered.  We’re thinking of going out on it one day.  That looked fun! The girls’ birthdays are coming up next week, but they want to do other things for that.

As we made our way back to the car, an emergency siren rang out and we watched as the coast guard rushed out in their high-speed motorboat.  We didn’t stay to find out what was the trouble.