With promises and great expectations of widespread sunshine, J and I headed off to the northern coast of France. A withering, cold fog had descended on the region and it was scarcely to lift throughout the weekend.

Memories of the sort of reliably unreliable weather so typical of the British seaside began to seep through our clothes like the damp air.

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North Coast Continental

An embarkation zone for Julius Caesar and retreating Allied forces, the Nord Pas de Calais and Flanders coastline's all quiet under a blanket of fog.

Boulogne-sur-Mer

Boulogne-sur-Mer was wintry at best when we arrived, hardly the picture of early April.

Boulogne (pronounced “Boo-loin”) was once a firm favourite with British daytrippers, safe enough even for those whose xenomyophobia prevented them from venturing into the French interior.

Not one of these intrepid adventurers seems to have minded that whatever British bombs had erased could never be replaced by brutalist architecture. Of course, everyone was in the same boat: Swindon, Coventry, Berlin, Dresden, Rotterdam, the list (and the horrible architecture) goes ever on.

J once came here on a school trip with fellow pupils: an awkward bundle of rabid, pre-pubescent boys and suddenly self-aware girls, jammed into a rickety old hotel weakened by bomb tremors and rusting from the salty air.

The teachers, ever willing to exert control by threat, got together and decided to have pupils practice their non-existent French. Little J was thrust into a tabac to ask for directions to some hastily pre-defined place or other.

It seemed that only J and the shopkeeper – frozen in a bizarre, cross-channel display of dumbfounded mutual recrimination – could appreciate the incongruity of an 11 year old child in a shop that sold pipes and tobacco.

Ambleteuse

A consensus of opinion suggests that Boulogne was the base of departure for Julius Caesar’s first invasion of Britain in 54BC, a location Caesar called Itius Portus.

Others reckon that the present day village of Ambleteuse might actually have been Itius Portus, or at least the embarkation point for Caesar’s second invasion a year later.

In any event, he didn’t find much on the sceptred isle but a whole bunch of rug-headed kerns. As Cicero relates in his letter to Atticus:

Moreover, it is now known that there isn’t a pennyweight of silver in that island, nor any hope of booty except from slaves, among whom I don’t suppose you can expect any instructed in literature or music. Cicero, Letters to Atticus 4.17

Dunkerque

At the end of May 1940, there were plenty of men in Dunkerque who would have happily swapped places with the crestfallen Caesar.

Trapped on the coast by the German spearhead’s terrifying speed and efficiency, the Allies had nowhere else to retreat but the sea. Amazingly, and in no small part thanks to an unexpected halt called by Hitler, they did just that. Over 338,000 Dutch, Belgian, French and British soldiers were successfully evacuated.

De Panne

Whilst the Victorian grandeur of English seaside resorts like Brighton and Eastbourne erodes slowly like the chalky cliffs on which they stand, De Panne has moved with the times. Sort of.

Just over the border in Belgian Flanders, De (or ‘La’ to francophones) Panne has more in common with the midrise retro of Benidorm than the piers and promenades of Bournemouth.

Indeed, whilst bathing huts are still to be found on the beach, many of the seafront bars have taken to mock-Spanish names and selling sangria with the chips and mayo.

J and I spent the recent wet Bank Holiday weekend in Eastbourne, visiting Jim Wilding and his son Ashley.

The weather did destroy a lot of good photo opportunities. As soon as we stepped out of the car, we were totally drenched by hard rain and nigh blown away by the crazy coastal winds!

I think we made the best of it in the circumstances.

J and I spent a windy, wet and thoroughly English Bank Holiday weekend at the seaside.

We trekked down south to Eastbourne, the present home of one Jim Wilding (pronounced ‘Woylding’), Esq and his son Ashley Wilding (also pronounced ‘Woylding’).

At least the welcome, if nothing much else, was warm and hospitable.

Around town

When we weren’t in the Wildingmobile, we were getting soaked. It was the stuff of sterling Englishness, three bedraggled adults led by a sprightly boy who seemed completely oblivious to the cold and wet.

Eastbourne Redoubt

The South Coast of England is peppered with Martello towers and those in and around Eastbourne were supplied by the Redoubt, a small cylindrical fortress originally built in the early 19th century to provide coastal defences against a theoretical French invasion. Such an invasion might have been instigated by Napoleon I, whose hunger for new conquests was well-remarked.

In the twentieth century, the Redoubt served as a wartime storage depot and a temporary base for D-Day soldiers. Today it is a military museum.

Town and country

Once the healthy benefits of seaside trips were recognised, Eastbourne thrived and the town became known somewhat famously as the “Empress of Watering Places”. Its wartime role ushered in a more uncertain era. Eastbourne was a major target for German bombing and as a potential invasion landing point, the military importance of the area severely impacted tourism. Since the war, the town has struggled to recover.

West of Eastbourne is Beachy Head. Unofficially the site of the country’s greatest number of suicides, there were 87 recorded fatalities at the chalk headline between 2002 and 2006. Further down the cliffs, the hamlet of Birling Gap suffers from the coastal erosion caused by a mighty sea.

Birling Gap

The fishing cottages at Birling Gap were built in 1878. Some have fallen into the sea since then and it is noticeable that all of the newer buildings in the National Trust-owned hamlet are no more than semi-permanent installations.

The villages

Alfriston might be the British answer to Stepford, Connecticut. The quaint cafes and shops seem made for superficial tourism, but you have to wonder what sort of people really live here, in an English village that’s more preserved than homemade strawberry jam.

Still, the hymn Morning Has Broken was written here, a hint of secularity in the descriptions of earthly beauty.

The Long Man of Wilmington dates from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Popular rumour suggests that the Man’s manhood was deliberately obscured during restoration in 1874.

The Long Man was fully obscured during World War Two. Apparently he was so visible that the forces were worried that enemy aircraft might use him as a guide. Duly unveiled after the war, he was recently given a haircut in April 2007.

Pevensey

There has been a fortress at Pevensey, or “Anderitum” as the Romans named it, since around 300AD at which time the whole area was mostly marshland. Overrun by Saxons, the fortress was patched up as a means of defence by Harold Earl of Wessex in 1042. According to popular belief, twenty four years later, Harold (by now King of England) was distracted by Norwegian troubles and William the Conqueror’s Normans landed here uncontested.

After a civil war siege a century later, the castle was allowed to pass quietly into history and Pevensey became more famous for smuggling.

Weeverfish

Only one person, in 1927, is known to have died from the sting of a Weever (not ‘Weaver’) fish. Most of the time we get to enjoy these nasty little buggers in a tasty Bouillabaisse.

Farewell, Eastbourne!

And then it was hometime. Chock full of photos and memories, we headed back on the train.