Battle of Hastings, Brighton and Portsmouth

After seeing Hastings Fort, we headed North a few miles to Battle, location of Battle Abbey and the field where the Battle of Hastings was fought.

This is the Battle Abbey leading to the field. It was built by William the Conquerer as penance to the Pope for killing so many English. The Pope had approved his mission to claim the Throne, but having 8,000 casualties was unexpectedly high. This is not the original Abbey but we’ll see parts of it later.

This is the field where the battle took place. This is the view from where the English were up the hill. They had the better position but were defeated by superior tactics from the Normans. You do a 40 minute walk around the field with a really interesting audio tour.

Now we see parts of the older Abbey.

Can I just say I love mazes!

This is inside part of the old Abbey. This room was the one where the Monks were allowed to talk.

If people are in the South East of England, I really recommend this as a place to visit.

It was then an hour or so’s drive to Brighton and the famous Brighton Pier. Pretty tacky nowadays but I can see it still being popular with the kids. As you can see it is pretty long.

And a view of the beach and the numerous hotels from the pier.

After Brighton we drove to Portsmouth where we were staying the night. There are no photos from Portsmouth as it is the most boring place we have encountered. Ginga Ninja suggested it made Hamilton seem a fun hip place. I think that was unfair to Hamilton and that a better comparison would be Wanganui or Palmerston North. Yes Portsmouth is the Palmerston North of England – the place that John Cleese described as an ideal place to live if you want to kill yourself but just haven’t been able to summon up the motivation!

The GPS was set to take us to the city centre and we ended up going around the block three times. We then realised it must be because there is no city centre in Portsmouth. It is just a collection of boring buildings and some ships.

We eventually found an Indian restaurant where we had dinner before heading back to the hotel. Even the Hotel was boring!

Originally our plan was to stay in Portsmouth for two nights and maybe visit the Isle of Wight. But we decided unanimously that we would get up as early as possible the next morning and flee to the North.

Despite Portsmouth it was a great day though.