Bank Holiday -60m Arrive home from family time in Norfolk. Kettle on. Bank Holiday -30m Check Monday's weather forecast in London. Check Monday's weather forecast in Seaside Resort. No contest. Bank Holiday -5m Purchase seriously-cut-price rail ticket to Seaside Resort (£15 instead of more than double that) 00:10 Research places to go in, and around, Seaside Resort. 01:00 Set alarm for stupid o'clock.
06:00 Wake before alarm, because bodies are like that. 06:30 Re-check weather forecast. Smirk. 07:15 Blimey it's quiet out. Head for mainline station. Am wrapped up warm, for now. 08:00 Slump into table seat in nigh-empty carriage. Get new book out. 10:00 Stuff book back into rucksack and head off into Seaside Resort. I've not been here since 1970.
10:30 Ignoring the town centre for the time being, arrive at Modernist pier. Admire high alumina concrete. 11:00 Decide against long trek to geographytastic coastal feature (maybe some other time). 11:05 Jacket comes off and gets stuffed in rucksack. It is finally, actually, definitively, spring. 11:30 Gratuitous use of cliff lift, for experiential purposes, then immediately zig-zag back down to beach. 11:45 Avoiding land train, arrive at Seaside Resort's second pier. Queue to pay token amount for admission. Fail to stop for drink, or zipwire whizz. 12:00 Follow minor river into town centre, choosing to ignore expensive 10 minute aerial ride. 12:30 To appeal to local grey-haired contingent, teenage keyboard buskers in Seaside Resort have evolved to play rock and roll numbers and 1970s TV themes. 12:35 Locate grave of famous novelist in churchyard, opposite Wetherspoons named in her honour. 12:45 Five miles walking complete. Arrive at Seaside Resort's museum. Admire wildly Art Nouveau interior.
13:45 Consider stopping for a drink, but press on along seafront. Bank Holiday beach bustle now in full effect. 13:55 Consider stopping for fish and chips, but the fish doesn't look local, and the chips are nowhere near as thick as they ought to be. 14:00 Still gratuitously following paths and steps up and down the cliff, rather than sweeping along the promenade with the masses. 14:15 Serious contours mean Seaside Resort isn't as full of mobility scooters as some other seaside resorts. 14:30 Finally succumb and queue for an ice cream, from one of the less extortionate kiosks. That'll do for lunch. 15:00 Return to the wooded valley I remember our hotel was adjacent to in 1970. I suspect it's now under new management. 15:20 Another four miles completed. Cross local authority boundary into adjacent unitary district (I notice these things). 15:30 Walking down a remote street in the deeper suburbs. No normal daytripper to Seaside Resort would venture this far (and rightly so). 15:45 Return to seafront via another wooded valley. Decide against long trek to second geographytastic coastal feature (maybe some other time). 16:00 Temperature hits nineteen degrees, in entirely uncharacteristic bank holiday weather jackpot. 16:15 Pass several red-faced families clustered outside beach huts drinking tea/cola/beer and scoffing Pringles. 16:30 Consider stopping for a drink, but that would be defeatist. Press on to surprisingly-distant railway station.
17:00 Settle into less cosy seat in quite busy train. Get book out again. 18:45 Two-thirds of new Bryant & May book now complete. It's good innit? 19:00 Return to busy (and somewhat overcast) London. Why is everybody here wearing a coat? 19:15 Consider getting jacket back out of rucksack, but decide to brave the chill instead. Get some funny looks.
19:45 Arrive home from grand day out in Seaside Resort. Coat off. Kettle on. Feet up. 20:15 Finally get round to eating something substantial (by amalgamating contents of fridge). 20:45 Start looking through today's photos (I appear to have taken 342). Most are not as good as I'd hoped. 21:30 Put kettle on again. Apparently I walked fifteen miles today (my legs feel as if this measurement is correct). 22:00 What I should do next is upload my favourite photos to Flickr and then write a thousand word report on my day out. 22:01 Cop out and write a report about a report instead. 23:30 Upload rather too many photos anyway. Bank Holiday +30m Crawl into bed and set the alarm for fractionally later than stupid o'clock.
