Let's walk the road of the year, which is of course the A2023.
It's two miles long, it's mostly residential and it runs from the sea to the hills.
And it's not in London, even though the A2022 was, it's in Hove.
In a magnificent piece of pre-planning I walked the A2023 when I was down in Brighton on August Bank Holiday Monday, so here come some sunny summery photos of a road I hope I haven't forgotten entirely over the last five months.
I confess I didn't walk all the way to the top end. I got as far as Old Shoreham Road and thought "that park looks more interesting, I'll walk up that to the miniature railway and then I'll hike up Three Cornered Copse towards Patcham Mill and strike out into the South Downs". On the day this was absolutely the right move but today it leaves me with a damp squib of an ending, plus I missed a few genuinely interesting buildings, something the rest of the road generally lacks. I hope I'm not underselling this.
Also, alas, at no point along the A2023 is there a sign saying A2023. The road feeds up from the seafront towards the A23 and A27 on the outskirts of town so they get pride of place (in brackets) and the poor old A2023 presses on invisibly. So here's a made-up sign they could have used instead, except it's in the wrong typeface and it wouldn't point towards Hove because it's in Hove anyway.
Hove A2023 →
Before diving in I should tell you a little of the history of the A2023. It used to be the B2124 but was renumbered A2023 in the 1960s when the A2038 Brighton bypass was built because the original A2023 wasn't suitable for northward extension so that became the B2185 and the A2023 effectively jumped a few blocks to the west and the original B2124 designation was then reused near Lewes. I hope that's clear.
It'd be nice if the A2023 started on the seafront because then I could show you a photo of Hove's fabulous beach huts, but it doesn't quite, it starts one street back on the A259. Back in the summer there was a circus pitched here on Hove Lawns but that's undoubtedly moved on. The road ahead is called Hove Street and on the corner is Viceroy Lodge, one of those big blocks of seaside flats where every resident has a balcony with a Channel view and day-round sunshine. Across the road is the Ginger Pig, a smart gabled gastropub/brasserie with 11 en-suite rooms because Hove is no longer a guest house/B&B kind of city. I bet Zoe Ball's been in.
A few mansion blocks follow, one of glorious 1897 vintage and another of less alluring postwar stack. This is the end of the road where you can browse for antiques, sip frothy coffee at a pavement table, drop in on a seamstress or take your pooch to a grooming spa - it gets a bit less 'Sunday supplement' the further up we go. The true heart of Hove is just off to the right down Church Street - a parish church, a town hall and hundreds of shops and restaurants for when you don't want to schlep into Brighton - but you see none of that from the A2023. I love the old sign in the wall here pointing towards 'Museum & Art Gallery 200 yards', although that's since been named the Hove Museum of Creativity and the rebrand team didn't quite get this far.
The A2023 now becomes Sackville Road and ploughs on across a dense grid of desirable late Victorian townhouses, much to the delight of local estate agents. The odd pizza delivery joint now starts to intrude, and eventually minor convenience stores and bog standard hair salons. For those who like to know which bus routes we're following it's the 2, 2B, 5, 5A, 5B, 25, 46, 49, 71A, 93, 95, 95A and 96A, because Brighton & Hove's network is nothing if not complex and thorough. The last building before the railway bridge is a Salvation Army Citadel, which sounds much grander than it is, and then the tracks of the Coastway service shuttle across the road. Hove station is barely quarter of a mile to your right and Aldrington station is less than quarter of a mile to your left, so take your pick.
Abruptly the townscape changes to an eruption of generic vernacular flats. A housing developer has swept away Sackville Road Trading Estate and is replacing it with 820 serviced apartments, a mere 10% of them 'affordable', to create a Station Quarter focusing on wellness, uptickable amenities and other cosy fripperies. Residents will be able to enjoy panoramic views from the communal sky lounge, and everyone else in Hove will see bricky cuboids on the skyline because nothing else hereabouts is this tall. A sign of how the economy's changed over the last 25 years is that when Brighton's neighbouring Goldstone Ground was redeveloped in 1997 it became a six-shed retail park.
And then comes Old Shoreham Road, which was formerly the A27 until a stonking great bypass was carved round the edge of the Downs in the 1990s. The A2023 continues uphill, now named Nevill Road, but this you'll remember is where I gave up and turned off. In doing so I missed Brighton's greyhound track, a premier venue since 1928. I missed a big Waitrose, because of course Hove has one of those. And I narrowly missed the amazing Goldstone Pumping Station which in 1976 became a repository of steam engines and oily things known as the BrightonEngineerium. It looks right up your street, indeed I bet several of you went, but sadly it's been closed since 2005 and the very latest plan is to transform it into a "cutting-edge centre designed to promote health, happiness and wellbeing in the community". Never let a pier owner buy a museum complex.
The A2023 climbs on to a muted finish in West Blatchington, a windmilled suburb, where it joins the A2038 King George VI Avenue. So there's every chance I'll come back and walk that in 15 years time, maybe even all the way to the end. Patience. And Happy New Year.
