St. Leonards & Hastings

After a simple breakfast, our friends took us on an extended walk through the city (or cities) of St. Leonards and Hastings.  This is a seaside community, and although the weather was sunny and not cold, it was very windy and blustery.

We looked at gardens...

...and statues, like this one of old Queen Vic, which still  bears a bullet hole from the strafing run of an enemy aeroplane in WW-II.

Eventually we found ourselves wandering in the historic areas of old Hastings,

with considerable activity going on all around us, as people shopped and chatted and sat for a coffee, etc.  There was some unusual local artwork, like the stainless steel sculptures found here and there around the city.

This one which I assumed to be a depiction of the prow of a boat, is actually supposed to be  Heron, or some similar bird. Yes, I can see that, I suppose.

The artist (whose name I forget) responsible for this octopus has several pieces around the city.  Check the Blog Photos Album in the sidebar, if you want to see more.

Eventually, we ended up in the Fisherman's Museum.  One of the main exhibits was a large, fishing boat, once famous in these parts, but now no longer seaworthy.

What caught my eye about the Enterprise that nobody else seemed to notice, (and it wasn't mentioned in any of the museum's information) was this small plaque:

This little vessel, was one of thousands like her, that was part of the "Armada of Little Ships" which worked towards the saving of the British Expeditionary Force from the horrors of Dunkirk, in 1940.  Just now, there is a new, big-budget movie called Dunkirk, about the day the channel saved Britain by being particularly calm.  If you go to see this movie, remember the Enterprise and the men who sailed her!

The Enterprise can be seen in this newsreel from 1955, in which Sir Winston Churchill is enrolled in The Hastings Winkle Club.

We saw the local landmark known as the Net Shops, where the local fishermen built tall structures to store and dry their nets,

and the fashionable new architecture that takes it's stylistic cues therefrom.

We'd walked a couple of miles by then, so we had lunch (mine was a delicious spaghetti carbonara), and taxi'd back to a point close to the house.  A short walk through a gardened area and we were home!

(By the way, the other time the weather in the channel saved Britain was in 1588, when terrible storms destroyed the Spanish Armada, while the English fleet remained safe in port and Sir Frances Drake played bowls!)