Day 48 - Fieldtrip to Brighton

A fieldtrip to Brighton for my "Coastal and Estuarine Environment" course. Was very excited about it, cause I finally get to see a shingle beach!

But the day didn't start off too well. I overslept by 15 minutes, discovered on the tube that I forgot to bring my camera. Ran around the areas between Victoria Tube Station and Victoria Coach station for another 20 minutes, because someone misdirected me back to the Tube Station, claiming that that's where the coach station is. Anyway, I manage to reach the bus in time, partly thanks to Mingli who tried to delay the bus driver.

After a long 2hrs ride, we're finally at cold, grey Brighton. The following pictures you see are from my 2MP handphone.

Took this by accident, but it more or less gives you the scale of the shingle.

Brighton Pier - it's like lost in time, stuck in the 70s or earlier. It's like amusement park on the sea, with really lame things like "Horror Hotel". A German exchange student said she'll love to go there just to see how lame it is. That's our meeting point by the way. But hey, since it goes so much into the sea, it provided a good vantage point during the fieldtrip. Except the fact that the lecturer is constantly interrupted by those ride's music every 5 minutes.

Future lesson material. Guess if I'm on the updrift or downdrift?

Just when we were wondering how did so much material get here, we were told that the beach was nourished. Then again, it was nourished from the offshore material. So the pre-nourished beach would have roughly the same sediment size.

It's too painful to fall on shingle. So they created a sandy area for beach sports.

Finally some sand!

My first fish and chips in UK. This one is.......

A destroyed pier from the past. When we walked past here, our lecturers looked at a painting of Brighton at a nearby art shop. Guess what they said? "There is no way the waves will break like how it is shown in the painting".

You see signs like this.

A more un-vandalised one.

It was so cloudy and foggy, you can't even see a horizon.

Someone found something close to home.

Some summer palace. Attempt to mimic Moghul architecture with disastrous distasteful results.

And so it was a long bus ride back to London. It took only 30 minutes to hit Gatwick, but 1hr odd to reach Victoria. Why? London's traffic. Start, stop, start, stop. Even I would puke. But hey, like this lame sign on the pier says, "BRIGHTON UP YOUR DAY!"