“We are seldom aware that we may imbibe long potations of pleasure and healthy excitement without perhaps going out of our own county” Anthony Trollope
Fresh back from a short break in Rye – less than 90 minutes from home and, yes, “without going out of our own county” – I couldn’t agree with Trollope more. I realise this may sound odd coming from someone who makes a living from tourism. But I love spending time in familiar territory and then veering off the beaten track, to see and feel things differently.
Spending two nights in Rye – instead of the usual afternoon – meant we found time to walk in the January sun and wind on the extraordinary and empty Camber Sands, where a strong prevailing southwesterly created amazing shifting patterns in the sand. Fine grains from the dunes were swirling along the beach like rolling mist. And all the rather beautiful flotsam and jetsam – the driftwood, the tangled rope, the bladderwrack, the cuttlefish shells – were in turns veiled and then uncovered as waves of sand came and went on the wind. I’ve lived all my life by the English Channel, yet never experienced this phenomenon before.
Travel to new places is wonderful – but I heartily recommend travelling in your own backyard too …