A postcard from bustling Brighton, a tight-knit town defying the downturn
Sunday morning on Brighton beach and I had accumulated a good haul of beer cans, plastic bottles, a flip-flop, a discarded sock, several lighters, some pizza boxes and something far too rude to mention. It takes a lot to shock a Brightonian but let’s just say it was in a tube, came from Anne Summers and would’ve made Mama Ru blush.
Not many guests at the new Selina hotel turned up for the 7.30am beach clean. In fact, I was the only one. “You don’t really get this in Barcelona or Lisbon,” said general manager Hugo Carvalho as we combed the pebbles with our grabbers. “People do party but they tend to take it away.”
The council’s warnings about fines for littering appear to have fallen on deaf ears, although we got off lightly last weekend. The heatwave had broken on Friday, leaving the beaches relatively quiet. In spite of the season’s stuttered start, and the fact that Brighton hasn’t been able to run its festivals or host Pride, the city has felt extraordinarily busy. The sea temperature has been hovering around 20 for a while, and I’ve long stopped checking the webcam before my morning swim.
After our beach clean I went for a dip and then ordered waffles with burnt marshmallows smothered in Brass Monkey (a local brand) vanilla and honeycomb ice cream at Selina’s laid-back Old Pier restaurant. “There’s nothing pretentious here,” said Carvalho. “We want people to feel they can sit down in their flip flops.”
The hotel ran at full occupancy over its first weekend and is booked well into September. Business across the city is brisk. “We are very busy but people are booking at much shorter notice so it’s always worth phoning to check,” said duty manager Julie, at Drakes hotel, where pop-up restaurant Amarillo has found a permanent home under new chef Ian Swainson.
When it opened in 2000 the maverick Pelirocco hotel attracted almost as much attention as Brighton’s naturist beach (which opened in 1980). Its racy themed rooms are legendary. “We've welcomed back some of our fabulous regulars who have stayed in every different room and tried every cocktail on the menu but we’ve also seen an influx of new faces,” said duty manager Alis O’Connor Knowles.
“We're booking up for September but should still have some availability.” The Peli’s newest themed rooms include The Tropical Paradise. More Barbados than Brighton it has a hammock and should make you feel like you're on holiday regardless of the weather.
Just as Brighton and Hove is a collection of neighbourhoods, so too, is the beach. The scruffiest and busiest bit is the train-and-flop strip a 15-minute arrow-straight walk from the railway station. With close proximity to toilets, lifeguarded beaches, children’s rides, bars and food outlets and the Palace Pier, the appeal to day-tripping families is obvious (and not everyone wants artisan coffee and “poncy halloumi”, as one recent visitor put it).
Don’t be fooled by the busy wedge of pebbles between the two piers (the West Pier is a ruin) because there’s plenty more beyond. In what feels like an “up yours Covid” show of defiance there have been some cracking new additions to the beachfront scene.
The 31-room Selina (selina.com) – a stand-out thunder-cloud green facade among a stretch of regal buttermilk buildings – opened last week, opposite the i360 attraction. Inside, designer Tola Ojuolape has gone for a backdrop of pinks, blues and sea greens. A local artist is curating a gallery wall, and there is an on-site workshop dedicated to upcycling. In the reception area a chunk of the city’s beloved West Pier is now a coffee table. “This brand is all about community,” Carvalho told me. We look for sites where we can make an impact and give back to the city – whether that’s using local coffee or cleaning a beach.”
West of the i360, halfway between a row of multi-coloured beach huts and Hove watersports lagoons, locals and well-informed tourists have been hanging out at Rockwater Hove. This clutch of beach shacks serving cocktails, coffee, local beer and oysters opened in late June, in place of a permanent venue, whose opening is delayed by Covid-19.
It’s amazing what you can do with a few railway sleepers and some beach huts. Some afternoons here segue into evening with a saxophonist or sunset yoga; other evenings have brought a dose of Ibizan chutzpah to this genteel part of town, with performing mermaids, angle-grinder artists and aerial hoopists. Not forgetting male burlesque performer @bighairygrowler (AKA Dave the Bear). “The council has been really supportive, as has the local community and our performers have been very grateful for the work,” said Electric Cabaret Company director, January King (electriccabaretcompany.co.uk).
The silicone-tailed mermaid has to be carried very carefully to the sea. “We don’t put her in if it's choppy,” said King. “She particularly enjoyed the oysters afterwards at The Fish Shack.”
A 10-minute stroll east of the Palace Pier, Brighton’s Kemp Town has a new waterfront hub at Sea Lanes (sealanesbrighton.co.uk). The resistance pool training facility launched last year opposite Madeira Terrace and this summer has expanded to include wood-fired saunas (in converted horse boxes), a yoga dome, a small outdoor gym and a tiki-style bar and cafe. Rooftop Zumba and guided swims are popular.
On a beautiful sunny morning I pulled up a deck chair at the wood-clad White Cloud coffee bar with managing director Joe McNulty. Pebbles aside we could’ve been in the Caribbean.
Madeira Terrace was originally built as a covered promenade when the railway opened in the late 1800s. Long neglected, this stretch of seafront with its decaying heritage arches is slated for restoration. A #savebrightonterraces crowdfunding campaign supported by locals including DJ Fatboy Slim raised almost half a million pounds to kickstart the council’s five-phase £24m project. “We’re the guinea pigs for the whole regeneration project,” said McNulty. The council is testing the commercial viability of east Brighton, to see if people will come.”
The feather in the cap for Brighton will be a new heated pool. Sea Lanes’ ultimate goal is to offer a training hub for open water swimming events, sea safety and lifeguard courses and to get children safely into the water. McNulty said that the summer pop-up has given Sea Lanes a better understanding of what works in the community. However, if Sea Lanes’ latest bid for an Olympic-sized (original plans were for a 25-metre pool) pool is successful, Brighton will become home to the National Open Water Swimming Centre. “If it comes together this is going to be the best part of Brighton,” he said.
Summer 2020 has also seen a crucial part of another, multi-million pound Seafront Investment Programme come to fruition. A building site for three years, the listed 19th century Shelter Hall on the promenade re-opened in July as a food hall (shelterhall.co.uk) offering ringside seats of the bustling beach-level walkway. The Covid-adapted Shelter Hall Raw is a pared-back version of what was due to be a 10-restaurant venue for 250 diners, but menus from local favourites including Curry Leaf Cafe and Lost Boys Chicken, don’t disappoint. The original plans, which includes a rotunda on the upper prom and a roof terrace, will be revealed next year.
Further east and west of the city the beaches change entirely. At low tide, Rottingdean is pocked with rock pools (take the Undercliff Walk or number 12 bus). There’s rich pickings here for gulls and children armed with nets. Stroll along Shoreham’s vegetated shingle and you might see red and white valerian, sea kale, yellow-horned poppy, seaside daisies, silver ragwort and purple spikes of viper’s bugloss blowing in the breeze. The beach is a designated Local Nature Reserve and spring tides reveal a runway of sand. Follow the boardwalk east and it will eventually bring you to the remains of an old fort.
With the Sussex Downs on one side and and kitesurfers and paddle boarders on the other I’ve yet to find a finer local spot for a beachside sunset. (Take the train or the 25-minute 700 Coastliner bus to Shoreham). Some well-travelled ex-pat American friends laugh every time I invite them south to the beach. The “stones”; the Channel; the cold water. “That’s not a beach!” they screech. Last month I brought them here. We walked for over an hour on the fine, puddled sand. The horizon sparkled and the sun sank into it like a gold-wrapped penny. They finally got it.
