Sunday 23rd January - Walk in Herne Bay

The plan was to be up soon after 8. Apparently I slept through my alarm. I woke up when Dave's went off. I still remember reaching to switch mine off even though it had shut up about 10 minutes before. Bat arrived at quarter past 9 as planned and we went over to MacDonalds for breakfast, collecting Chippy on the way. I had been Mac-lied to. They no longer do Mac-fruit toast. I had a cheese, egg and bacon bagel and a coffee. We left MacDonalds, by luck, at 10 as originally planned.

On the way there, we were threatening to change the “Cars Bought For Cash” to “Cars Bought for Chickens” and discussion ensued with what else we could change the sign to. This is the general sort of rubbish that we find to chat about when travelling.

We found a pay-and-display car park on the sea front. We later found safe parking spaces that we wouldn't have had to pay for but at least the car was safe. We'll know to try the other spaces first in future. We wandered along past the pier, taking photos and choosing what houses we would like on the way. Also checking out the state of the 400 beach huts. Some of them look new and some look like they have seen better days. One was just a lock up box with a surf board padlocked to the outside. They reminded me of the episode of “Keeping Up Appearances” when Hyacinth hires a boat and gets excited when she sees them but it turns out she's got an old wreck. Wouldn't you be disappointed if you walked past all of the lovely ones only to find the one that you bought or rented wasn't.

After about 45 minutes we went up some steps and came back along the road for more nosing at houses and gardens, picking up the beach again near the rocks. I went to take a photo of a statue in the park and there was a moving statue water feature that shouldn't have been there! Oh dear.

We went to The Saxon Shore, Weatherspoons pub, for dinner. For £5.99 we had a pint and a roast dinner. I had Red Castle Cream (Newman's brewery, Caerphilly) with roast beef. We had another drink there before moving on to the ice cream parlour. As I didn't want an ice cream, I had a lovely hot chocolate. We're planning a trip back to the ice cream parlour too for their fish and chips. If you spend £20 or more on fish and chips, you get a free bottle of wine. That would need 3 of you to share as the cod and chips were £7.95.