Bugger Bognor? No.

Our hotel last night was cheap enough provided we didn't have breakfast there. The hotel's breakfast would have brought the price up to a hundred pounds, a price we're trying to keep as an upper limit, only to be used in an emergency. (The 3 B&Bs so far have averaged 107GBP, so it's not all going according to plan.) So anyway, we had a fairly meagre and not delicious breakfast at a bakery a few doors down from the hotel. But we were too early. Stephen had wanted to look at some shops, and I wanted to see the Royal Pavilion, but we had finished breakfast by 8.30, and nothing was open yet. So far everything has opened at 10am, but luckily the Pavilion opened at 9.30, so we went back to our room to finish packing properly so we could be out as soon as possible. We got back to the Royal Pavilion at 9.32, and were able to squeeze past the group of French schoolkids to walk around mostly clear of them. What an amazing place this was! Sorry, no photos allowed, but this was the holiday home of George IV, and it has been exquisitely restored. Huge beautiful ornate rooms and galleries, all Chinese-themed, (although the outside is Indianesque, see picture) in an 18th century imagining of what exotic and romantic Chineseness should look like. Just gorgeous. Overdone of course, but not so over-the-top that your eyes hurt.
We walked around some shops and up and down some little lanes (called "the Lanes") to get back to the hotel. Brighton seems to be great for shopping: loads of individually operated shops, selling quirky and interesting stuff. When we were just picking up our bags to go down to check out, an alarm sounded, so we carried everything down five floors and outside. It turned out to be a staff drill, and we were able to just hand over our key cards and leave. But the car was parked a couple of blocks away (there was no parking at the hotel) so Stephen went to get the car while I waited on a side street with the bags. Half an hour later the Peugeot made it back - the one-way streets and no-exit lanes made it almost impossible to navigate Brighton's central city. Stephen was fuming, and I had started to seriously worry.
We continued westwardly out of Brighton, with the idea of having lunch at Bognor Regis on the way to Portsmouth. I had booked 3 nights at an AirBnB flat, and we have

really been looking forward to settling for a little while, rather thatn checking in and out of new places every day. And we really needed to do some laundry.
But anyway, Bognor was really nice. It's not too try-hard old-fashioned, like Eastbourne or even Brighton, where for miles along the seafront all the houses are Georgian or Victorian in stye, even if they are only 10 years old. BR had several terraces of flats and houses that were actually modern but pretty, with balconies and terraces, and they looked just as good as the rest of the seafront. And we found a really nice cafe for lunch. Also, it was fantastic weather, which probably helped our first impressions a lot. After lunch we walked on the beach, and actually went in the water up to our ankles. It was low tide, and the sands were actually steaming. We can't work out the physics of this, and it's not a phenomenon we've seen anywhere else on a beach. Any ideas?
Then we came on to Portsmouth. We found the house and settled in, had a bit of a rest, and then drove into town to meet with a mate, a teacher who was in Vietnam, and whom Stephen has kept in touch with. We had some beers and dinner in a pub, and it was our first substandard meal on the trip. But then, maybe the fish and chip sandwich was a bad idea anyway. Still, not a bad record for food so far.