It’s raining very hard today. This has made us realise just how lucking we have been to wander the coastline of Britain during the hottest summer in a thousand years. This morning Jason finally forgave Tim for not letting him visit Dinosaur Farm on the Isle of Wight and Tim in return forgave Jason for not letting him visit Cider World. The rain as washed away several weeks of sulking.

Jason has a long association with Eastbourne pier having spent many a Sunday afternoon travelling the seven seas in the company of the legendary organist Chris Mannion. It took a free drink at the end of pier bar, courtesy of the manager Christoff, to raise Jason’s spirits as we learned that Chris had become a victim of the every changing face of the British seaside. Where once Chris stood proudly entertaining pensioners with his organ now stands a bank of strobe lights.

Christoff and his colleagues had gone to great lengths to welcome Pier2Pier and as such we found ourselves skidding around the pier in a crazy game of “Treasure Hunt”. Clues had been placed in each of the many (yes, many) Pier outlets and an hour of harmless fun was had on the cold, dank, miserable day that was 29th August 2003.

We are nearing the end of Pier2Pier and can say with some confidence that there are but a handful of piers that wouldn’t have seen us jumping overboard had we spent an hour on the them playing treasure hunt. Eastbourne, however, is a truly wonderful affair, and even the discovery that our treasure was a free portion of chips didn’t see us overboard. Eastbourne is a seaside town we can be proud of an Eastbourne Pier plays no small part.

Brighton Palace has had a sense of humour by-pass. Pier2Pier had been challenged to kiss 200 ladies for charity. A challenge we accepted with some indignation as we suspected this was yet another attempt by our backroom team to have us roundly humiliated in public. However, it was for charity and we are, if little else, for charity (?!). It was therefore with some considerably irritation that we took a call from the Pier manager who not only told us we couldn’t shake our cheese donation box but also asked that we didn’t complete our challenge! I ask you.

It gets worse! They wouldn’t let us on! Ok, it is crumbling into the sea, ok it is extremely dangerous, OK we aren’t David Blaine but we ARE PIER TO PIER! We have been on every other pier in Britain!

Brighton, you are not London, and don’t you forget it!!