We often used to drive down to Brighton, make use of the park and ride, and enjoy the shops and seafront area despite living in a coastal city ourselves with a similar stretch of pebbled beach and its own pier. But, much as we love Portsmouth, Brighton’s seaside area has it beat.
In September 2012 we had a birthday thing to attend in Horsham in the evening so we made the decision to make a day of it and pay another visit to Brighton first. The weather was lovely for it.
We started off with a bimble up and down The Lanes. It was here, a half dozen years earlier, that my wife had spotted an emerald ring in a jewellers that she really liked the look of, and with it being somewhat more than we’d normally spend on something like that this had led to us deciding to get married so as to pretend it was an engagement ring. Had we not visited The Lanes we may not have been married today, and we may not have discovered our love of cruising (at least for a while) because our honeymoon ended up being our very first cruise: Diamond Princess, Asia.
From The Lanes we headed down and along the pier. It’s Brighton Palace Pier to be precise, not to be confused with the West Pier, although you’d have a hard time walking along that one following the storms and fires that have destroyed most of it. Brighton Palace Pier was built in 1899 and was the third pier to be built along Brighton’s seafront. These days it hosts a decent amusement park at its end, is very popular with humans and seagulls alike, and makes for a lovely walk if you find yourself drawn to being near the sea as much as we do.
At the time of our visit the Brighton Wheel stood on the seafront. This was dismantled and removed in 2016 to allow the new Brighton i360 tower to take over the reins of “big thing on the beach that gives visitors a lovely view.”
