Our first attempt was the Dorset coast in early July. A few days before departure I was sidelined by a Covid quarantine, healthy myself but locked in with a husband who'd tested positive. The girls pushed on to the house we'd rented. A second attempt headed for Hastings in October, an altogether quirkier and more urban spot, though sharing the South Coast seaside appeal. All looked optimistic until Hillary caught the bug and had to leave another incomplete team to get on with things. This year was girls' trip by relay race.
The irony: the planner of each trip is the one who couldn't go. I got the better end of that deal, because the loft in the the old printworks on Claremont Street in Hastings stands out as one of the most memorable places we have ever stayed.
LOFTY ACCOMODATION
Occupying the upper two floors of a high Victorian printworks, it is a magnificent space for any group that could use four bedrooms. Each of those bedrooms is distinctive; the one with antique French furniture, a long, low sofa and a wall of windows looking over the rooftops of the Victorian town towards the old port and its castle was clearly the nicest. Beds were firm and comfortable, and the size of each room generous. Two bedrooms on the lower floor share a bathroom with a massive modern shower, while a full room under the eaves upstairs has been turned into a bathroom with a free-standing, claw-footed tub at its centre.
But it was in the public spaces where this loft really burns its way into the imagination.
There are two sitting rooms. One is at the front with a wood burning stove and the same view as that best bedroom. Turn to one side in the projecting bay windows and you're looking straight to the beach and sea 150 metres away. But that's a poky sideline compared to the enormous main sitting room with its soaring industrial ceiling dotted with skylights. This space is large enough to take a refectory table that seats 10, a trio of sofas and a sizeable open kitchen.
Someone with an eye for design clearly spent a lot of time thinking this place throughout. It’s obvious in the mix of mid-century industrial design pieces with European antiques, the banks of house plants, the subtle mix of earth tones and pastels and the eclectic variety of art. If that weren’t enough, the owner drives the message home with artfully arranged stacks of home design magazines and a gash in the aged plaster of one wall turned into an art installation with the insertion of tiny people climbing it like Everest.
HASTINGS, GOOD AND BAD
Hastings itself is, sadly, less glamorous than the flat. It hasn't yet shaken off that downmarket, tired, "I've seen better days" atmosphere that came to characterise English seaside resorts once the population started jetting off to sunnier places. There's a lot of beautiful but run-down architecture waiting for a saviour. Though there are some charming shops and restaurants in the Victorian centre (particularly the wonderful library-cum-cafe Hanushka Coffee), they're currently outnumbered by "everything's a pound" stores, chippies, kebab shops and old-style boozers with rough-looking patrons. There are also, sadly, a fair number of homeless people including one who accosted us when we didn't give him money when leaving the flat. Parking options are 1/3 of a mile away and I was a bit nervous walking from car to flat at night by myself. The loft and nearby attractions were memorable enough to compensate for the immediate area, but it's best to go in with your eyes wide open.
A brisk, 20-minute walk east on the seafront brings you to the historic port area, a far more pleasing prospect for dining and tourism. The seafront itself has all the classic attractions: fun fair, aquarium, crazy golf. The last has three 18-hole courses, including a pirate-themed adventure on which I sank two holes in one. So, naturally, that's highly recommended.
But if you're looking for more grown-up fun, follow George Street as it runs parallel to the coast, one block north. A shoppers' dream, this long and picturesque stretch of mostly historic buildings is occupied entirely by local businesses. While there's definitely a festival-going, tie-dyed vibe to many shops, the variety is vast. Dusty antique dens and vintage clothing boutiques sit beside modern interior design spots, upscale florists, and purveyors of historic hardware. There's another Hanushka Coffee here with the same book-lined dining space, and a wonderful half-timbered pub called Ye Olde Pumphouse that meanders over three stories.
George Street ends at the old High Street. Turn left and you'll enjoy another long stretch of shops, dining and drinking options. This bit is marginally less charming but still beats the vast majority of retail areas calling themselves High Streets and remains free of chain stores. There are a few more artisans up this way. I suspect the rent is cheaper the further you get from the seafront and therefore friendlier to people who're making a living off hand-knit alpaca socks or jewelry crafted from gold-gilt flowers.
A bit east from here, on a hillside covered with picturesque Georgian brick buildings that I suspect was Hastings' best neighbourhood until those 19th century improvers got to work, sits The Crown. The gastropub was recommended by our landlords as the best dining spot in town and is the kind of local everyone dreams of: historic surroundings with modern service, informal atmosphere with upscale menus, locally sourced products with culinary inspiration from around the world. The local sourcing even extended to the bar, where beers, ciders, gins and wines showed off the treasures of Sussex and Kent.
AWARD-WINNING ITALIAN
If you want fine dining, you'll need to leave Hastings. But you don't need to travel far. St. Leonards is the next community west along the coast, and would appear no different from Hastings were it not for a subtle-but-steady improvement in the repair of the buildings. There's less retail and more residential here, and the fact that sleek, modern luxury flats seem to have replaced most of the shabby, post WW2 apartment blocks suggests that developers have a sweet spot for this bit of coast.
It's here, right on the sea front, that you'll find La Bella Vista, named best restaurant in Sussex multiple times in various polls in recent years. The best proof point of its popularity was the crowd at 5:30 on a Saturday. It was the only slot we could get, and in a country where few eat dinner before 7, it was obscenely early. Yet every table was full when we arrived and none stayed empty long as we dined.
The menu is classic Italian, heavy on local seafood. Calamari were delicately battered, crisp and tasty, a tower of insalata caprese was made with top quality bufala and heritage tomatoes unusually succulent for this time of year (I suspect enough airmiles here to balance the virtue of your local seafood). We all had variations on pasta: seafood linguini showed off the day's haul in a sweet tomato sauce, vongole was classic with garlic and herbs. A limoncello tart was the perfect flavour profile to wrap things up. Book well in advance to score a traditional dining time, or skip lunch and dine at an American hour. Just don't attempt it without a reservation.
PICTURESQUE RYE
If you want the charm without real-people, real-economy intrusions, head for Rye. This stage-set of a town is 25 miles up the coast from Hastings but might as well exist on a different planet. One sponsored by Walt Disney and produced by the Downton Abbey team to give foreigners the England of their dreams. (Places like Rye are why a visiting uncle of mine concluded that England was a country far richer and better educated than the United States.)
Every view in Rye a postcard. All the pubs are traditional, all the shops are boutique and the antique stores have been curated for interior design, not packrat collectors. There's still a medieval gate and bits of defensive wall around what once was a port town sitting directly on the English channel. Today, rather than looking out to sea you're looking over miles of flat river valley that's silted up over the past 500 years. It makes Rye a sister-city in experience to Bruges, another tourist favourite frozen in time when its port silted up.
Rye is an ideal day trip for those who like to mooch around shops, and will provide hours of giddy delight to fans of architecture from the medieval through the Georgian. I could easily spend a week here on a sketching and painting holiday. It is, in fact, far more typical a girls' trip destination than Hastings.
Would I have traded our industrial chic loft in the edgy Hastings neighbourhood for a bijoux property in Rye? Not for a girls trip. I liked the variety of the weekend's venues, and the size of the flat allowed us to come together or retreat to private corners as we wished. It's set the standard for future years, wherever we go. Here's hoping that whatever the location, we end up with four healthy girls on holiday together at the same time.
