Bournemouth, England
There is somehting about the seaside that makes England want to put that touch of skank in place, and Bournemouth is no different.What is that stag parties, hen dos, neon lights and strippers have that links it to the beach? I have to admit I had high hopes travelling down in my first class train (no not as glamourous as it sounds) on my way to the 'mystery hotel' (ps not a mystery when you send me a letter telling me where it is). On arrival it suddenly made sense why when I announced my weekend plans to English people their eyebrows jumped sky high beofre they pulled their face back into place.
Travel tip 1: When asking people what a place is like and they respond "there's a sandy beach", don't get too distracted by that- ask for more, it is porbably skanksville.
Anyway after droppign stuff in the mystery hotel (turns out the mystery was trying to discover how the coudl call the room the 'executive' room) it was down to the beach for a bit of a stroll. Now I am not going to lie, there is nothing better than seeing your first sandy beach and hearing the waves after several months (a year if you don't count Malta, which I don't). If you were only looking atthe beach and not interacting with anyone else or needing to go into town Bournemoth is cool.
Travel tip 2: DO NOT be fooled by surfers in Bournemouth. They are not the fit young things with six packs and v that get changed behind a car door on West Coast Highway. They are old, with beer bellies and you suddenyl realise that the reason you didn't see anyone doing anything other than bobbing along on the board is because there is no way any of them have the corse strength to stand up!
Travel tip 3: When staying in a hotel that can only be described as questionable do not trust the receptions suggestion of where to go for dinner. Yes that road (have burnt the name form my memory, maybe Christchurch) may have everything you could possibly want ..... if you are on a stag do or hen do. PS if you are on a stag do Wiggles has the girls outside intheir underwear for a bit so no need to spend any money!
Anyway the next day was walk walk walk along the beach. Which to be honest was great. For those of you who don't know, Bournemouth invented the beahc hut house thingys and they're pretty cool. I'd lilke ot see it in summer with all the huts open.
Its an easy walk down to Boscombe which seemed to be much nicer, though like Bournemouth not a lot of cafes etc on the water. Its weird, if i was a a developer that's exactly what i would be putting there- good food. The walk to Boscombe is when we started the Chine obsession. Now it turns out Bournemouth is famous for the Chines but I still am not actually sure what one of these was. I have tried to put it into sentences to work it out- "What the Chine is that?"
"Get me a Chine will you"
"Chine over there"
"Its Chine to see you"
And I still haven't solved this mystery, in fact I think I became more like a smurf using smurf as noun, adjective, verb etc The closest I have gotten is thinking it might be A gap in the cliff that they build a road in cause that's what there was at Audley Chine and Middle Chine but if that is the case, I think using the term 'touritst site' is a little bit of a stretch.
According to all my research (lonely planet 1 page on Bournemouth and Bournemouth website I got sent the link to) Bournemouth has many things to do in all sorts of weather- sunny, cloudy and rainy which was lucky cause we had all of that on the Sunday. The other great thing is that the 3 lists have all the same things just in different order, so you don't feel like you are missing anything! Basically it comes down to this:
1. Beach- tick
2. Russell something museum- tick. actually was pretty good, seems to be all the stuff Russell stole on his travels around the world (yes I am sure he stole them as the only section when the word 'purchased' was used was when they were talking about the Russian artifacts)
3. Oceanarium- no tick. This looked like the skanks version of Underwater world which is cool but I thin £10 to look at fish is a little steep.
All in all Bournemouth is probably a completely different place in the sun (like most places but more so on a beach) and if you're not going for a swim don't plan on staying long.
High point: The sun coming out while we were sitting on the beach and imagining myself somewhere else
Low point: Realising had spent the evening eating dinner effectively playing skank spotto but a bit more subtler.
