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Regular readers may have noticed that it is some months since we enjoyed a brunch at The Beach Hut Café on the promenade at Friars Cliff. That is because I have been unable to make the trip down from the clifftop car park.
The first stage, from the car park, is reasonably level, but far enough for me at the moment.
The concrete rings have featured before. This plate explaining their purpose
is screwed to the rock to the right of this path bypassing the rings. The cyclist will slalom round the barriers down
the sloping footpath leading to the beach huts,
and the beach with its clear view of the Isle of Wight and The Needles.
The most difficult part of the descent for me was this very steep incline.
When I ran the fells in Cumbria I would much rather run up than down the slopes. And that was when my knees worked.
Having reached the promenade there is a straight, flat, section between the huts and the benches sited for those who wish to watch the waves;
taking us to the café, which was, as usual, full to bursting both inside and out, although the demography of the patrons is somewhat different from that in the school holidays. In fact, while Jackie joined the lengthy queue for service and I investigated the seating options, the only available possibility was sharing a picnic table with a friendly woman and her unobtrusive dog. Noticing my rather hopeless efforts at jackknifing myself into position, the kind lady offered to seek out a chair for me. She did so. I thanked her and sat down. Jackie then arrived to tell me that there was a free table inside. I thanked my new friend once more and took up a place inside. Shame, really.
The food was definitely well worth the effort. I couldn’t fit my plate containing two rounds of toast and marmalade into the shot.
After this, we had to retrace our steps. The rather bent elderly woman towing her shorn dulux dog kept up a pace neither of us had any hope of emulating.
Jackie had no trouble with the steep slope
but avoided the steps which were my preferred return route.
Our central heating has never really worked upstairs. Knowing weather was about to cool down, we asked Ronan of Tom Sutton Heating to sort out the radiators. He fixed a pressure problem and bled the radiators. A date was arranged for him to fit a new vent to one of them. The next day the boiler stopped working. Fortunately our shower is electric and we have an open fire and a kettle. We limped through until today when Ronan made an emergency visit. I won’t bore people with the technicalities, but we need a whole new system, which is what I expected in the first place. This will take 3/4 days, need bedroom floors taken up, and be expensive.
This evening we dined variously. Jackie chose Tesco’s pulled ham with mashed potato and carrots accompanied by Hoegaarden; my Tesco’s prepared dish was chicken jalfrezi; Elizabeth enjoyed the last of Jackie’s beef pie. My sister and I both drank more of the Pinot Noir.