Last year we travelled along the English south coast from Deal to Brighton - in the same spirit we're now starting a couple of miles along the coast at Worthing to head to Lymington by way of the Isle of Wight.
Today we took a taxi - which of course arrived earlier than I'd booked it - to Leicester Station. We had a shortish wait for our train to St Pancras. It's surprising how busy these services are at all times of the day.
Rather than going to Victoria Station as the planner advised, we went by Thameslink to East Croydon. A couple of notes about this though - it's cheapest to use the contactless barriers, but you can't (easily) incorporate a railcard this way. Buying a ticket in advance - with the railcard - was slightly more expensive, and it avoided the difficulty of 'tapping off' at East Croydon. Changing at East Croydon was a mistake. The Southern service we changed onto was very full - for the simple reason that the next stop was going to be Gatwick Airport. At Gatwick most passengers got off and there were plenty of seats available. If we do this journey again then we'll stay on the Thameslink train and change at Gatwick.
It was gratifying how quickly we reached the coast. At Worthing the bus stop is right outside the station and we only had to wait a couple of minutes for a number 10 to it's terminus.
Our hotel is very old fashioned, huge with creaking floors and real opening windows. I've borrowed a fan from reception as its a bit on the warm side!
We decided to go out for a walk - it's a bit daft sitting in a hotel room after all - and as soon as we got to the hotel entrance we realised it had started to rain. To be fair, this was the weather forecast from lunchtime, so we'd been relatively lucky. Not to worry, I'd put our Super-stylish ponchos in the bag, and so we disguised ourselves as Super-stylish tourists and walked down the pier and back. We sat on a seat (in the rain) and watched the wind turbines and got some funny looks - or were they admiring our style?
Back at the hotel Sacha got the life story of a dog and it's owner while I sat quietly sipping my lemonade. I'm not saying that the bar has limited choices, but it does save worrying about what to order!
By the time we had decided to go and forage for food ,the rain had stopped. We went to the nice looking Italian restaurant next to the hotel (15% discount for hotel guests) and had a seriously good meal.
Afterwards we sat in the sunken sensory garden in The Steyne for a bit.
Worthing is OK. Definitely OK!