Two years ago I blogged about a hypothetical visit to Bognor Regis because nobody was travelling at the time, so you'll have read all the town's important history there. Last week I made an actual visit to Bognor Regis so you don't need the history again, you can just have some photos and a bit of reportage.
✉ The railway station is the size it needed to be when it was built, which is much bigger than it needs to be now.
✉ The town feels quite Victorian so long as you don't walk too far from the middle of it.
✉ Bognor Regis Museum still hasn't opened this year (I think they're having building work done) so I've added it to my list of Museums I Tried To Visit But Now Probably Never Will.
✉ Mid-afternoon midweek nobody was playing crazy golf, absolutely nobody. Even the palmist had shut up her cabin and gone home.
✉ Also in Waterloo Gardens I found the weather station which recorded the UK's record-breaking annual sunshine total, a statistic I mentioned last time so will not repeat.
✉ The pier's a shadow of its former self, just an arcade and a nightclub behind which a timber stump leads out to a lone windswept picnic table, and it won't surprise you to hear that was empty too. The views were good, but the best experience was walking underneath.
✉ Nobody was walking on the beach either, which at first I put down to needing to schlep over loads of pebbles to reach the sand, but eventually I blamed on dogs being banned from the beach between May and September.
✉ Simone has converted her car port in Outram Road into a community library, accessible from the street, to raise funds for fighting ovarian cancer. I was almost tempted to slump in a cosy chair with a Jackie Collins, but I had places to be.
✉ The Jubilee Beacon lookout has been painted a dazzling white ready for Thursday evening.
✉ Kioskwatch: cornets, buckets and spades, rubber rings, mint choc chip tubs, twirly windmills, Twisters, pink plastic sandals, freshly made donuts, chips.
✉ I stood on the platform of the miniature railway in Hotham Park, but the summer timetable was still two days away so no trains were running.
✉ Butlin's is enormous and very near the town centre. It looked busy judging by the ring of cars parked around the perimeter, but it was hard to see much beyond that, only the top of the big top and the upper storeys of some of the sleeker accommodation. I could tell how originally it used to be easy to percolate between the camp and the seafront, but now there's a big fence so I guess the guests don't get out much.
✉ If you want to take the bus to Selsey, five miles down the coast, it costs £8.90 (because a big inlet gets in the way and you have to take two buses). But I also needed to come back so instead I paid £9.10 for a Go Everywhere In Four Counties ticket (which cost substantially more than my return rail fare).
✉ The view of Selsey from Bognor is less inspirational than the view of Bognor from Selsey.
✉ Beyond Butlin's I'm not sure how you'd spend a week here (let alone a lifetime).
