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A little walk I did recently along the South Downs Way near Eastbourne.

Nothing really remarkable happened but I got free tea and cake from a church (thanks Jesus!) and the scenery was nice. I missed these open chalk downlands.

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As promised I went out to explore the nearby wind farm and in doing so made another crossing of the Romney marsh!

The place is called Little Cheyne Court wind farm and it was built in 2008 after a lot of local opposition. There’s a public footpath running right through it so you can get up really close to the turbines. It’s actually pretty scary standing underneath them with the blades spinning.

After that I plodded over the marsh to Dymchurch. Dymchurch is lovely! It’s a very stereotypical slightly-tacky British seaside resort, like a time capsule from the 60s or 70s. I had a 99 with a flake from an ice cream van, it was wonderful.

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I recently added support for VHDL-2008 generic subprograms to NVC. As far as I know it’s the first open source VHDL simulator to support them and allows you to write type-generic functions and procedures like this:

function fact generic (type t;
                       function "*"(l, r : t) return t is <>;
                       function "-"(l, r : t) return t is <>;
                       function "<"(l, r : t) return boolean is <>;
                       one : t)
        (n : t) return t is
begin
    if n < one then
        return one;
    else
        return n * fact(n - one);
    end if;
end function;

And then make concrete instances of the generic function:

function fact_int is new fact
    generic map (t => integer, one => 1);
function fact_real is new fact
    generic map (t => real, one => 1.0);

The is <> syntax in the declaration above picks up the default *, -, and < operators for that type from the context so there’s no need to specify them in the generic map.

assert fact_int(5) = 120;
assert fact_real(4.0) = 24.0;

The highest point in Hastings is called North’s Seat and is actually just behind my old secondary school. I walked up there a few weekends ago to have a look around.

The phone mast at the top

On the summit now there’s only this huge communications antenna but apparently there used to be a lookout post and a gibbet!

Some cow parsley (?) I saw on the way down

View across the Romney Marsh

In the distance we can see a wind farm: what else could be hidden there?! Stay tuned, I’m going to explore it tomorrow.

Last Friday was “Day of Care” at work so I decided to head out for an adventure to the wastelands of Romney Marsh.

The marsh is a large area of reclaimed land in Kent. As you might expect it’s very flat and perhaps not the most interesting terrain for walking.

Studying the map beforehand I knew I had to pay a visit to “Sheaty Sewer”, and this wooden bridge over a foetid open sewer vastly exceeded my expectations! (I think “sewer” might mean irrigation channel locally.)

Sheaty sewer

Below is the 800 year old church at St Mary in the Marsh. The church is open to look around during the day.

Church at St Mary in the Marsh

Towards the end I arrived at one of my favourite places, Dungeness! Not only is there a mini train and a lighthouse, there’s not one but two nuclear power plants! I discovered a path between them and the sea. It was very exciting. Below is Dungeness A, the older one, which is being decommissioned now but Dungeness B is still operating.

Dungeness A

A somewhat uneventful walk from Rye to Battle, the site of the battle of Hastings no less. Here’s the river Tillingham just outside Rye.

One thing I’ve noticed down here is that footpaths are not nearly as well signposted as they were back up in Oxfordshire. I got lost quite often, including walking in a big circle at one point. Maybe my navigation just sucks now.

Despite growing up here I’ve never done much exploring of the “interior” of East Sussex. Normally I just go for a walk along the coast in one direction of the other. Well, time to change that: a new programme of exploration is launched! The first mission is north to Bodium Castle and then to Robertsbridge.

A wood just outside Hastings

This was my favourite part of the walk, an unexpectedly lush wood just a few minutes from Hastings hospital.

Bodium Castle

Bodium Castle is basically what you get when you ask a five year old to draw a generic castle. It made a brief film appearance as “Swamp Castle” in Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

Robertsbridge high street

This was the most picturesque part of Robertsbridge, a small town on the Hastings-London train line. I’ve passed through it on the train loads of times but I don’t think this is the first time I’ve ventured into the town itself.

On the map I saw a “Robertsbridge Abbey” but what is left of the ruin is on private land and so a bit of a disappointment.

Sadly I’ve had to retire my “little chicken” that I’ve been feeding in the Alipay app for the last four years due to a lack of grain. I’ll just put a screenshot here to remember it:

It’s a game of sorts where you collect grain either by buying things with Alipay or “engaging” with the app in some other way, then you feed the grain to the chicken and after a six hour gestation period it will emit an egg. You can then donate your egg to a charitable cause… or something like that. You can also play games with the chicken or dress it up in different outfits, like the stylish purple ski attire mine has. It’s all rather fun. Unfortunately when you don’t feed the chicken for a while it will start to make a nuisance of itself by invading your contacts’ farms and stealing their grain, so I’ve had to put an end to it.

Unseasonably warm and sunny weather on the Easter bank holiday weekend so I decided to go for a walk in the opposite direction along the coast.

The sea was eerily calm, almost like a lake. You can see in the miniscule waves in the picture below.

The rebuilt (and bankrupt) Hastings pier

I got to Bexhill and on a whim decided to divert to Sidley, site of my former sixth form college.

All that remains of Bexhill Sixth Form college

Alas the college has since been demolished: all that hints at its former existence is a residential estate named “Scholar’s Walk” and these old railings. Demolition is a common fate of educational institutions attend by me.

Sidley, but it could be anywhere really

Sidley is pretty nondescript. It doesn’t seem to have changed much in the last 18 years (I think the Aldi is new). I wouldn’t recommend a visit.

I suppose I should feel honoured that my family’s ancestral hall has been commentated with this fine information board. However the building itself has seen better days and is not quite the fine palace I was imagining.

The heyday of our family beach hut

… and today’s sorry state

It’s just along the coast from Rye Harbour, which is somewhere I’ve visited many times, but I never saw the “ruin” before.

Mary Stanford lifeboat house

This is the “Mary Stanford” lifeboat house named after the lifeboat that used to be based here which tragically sunk in 1928 drowning all 17 crew.

Here’s the route I took along the coast: