Sunday 22 August 2010

In Which I Do Not Go Sailing

Friday saw me driving down to West Sussex to spend some time with my sister, her fiancee and sister number 2, who has been visiting them all week.
The others had got home on Thursday  - K&C have been sailing for the past 3 weeks, and E had joined them for the past week.

We went out for a meal on Friday night - to a fish resturant, where we had a lovely meal - the restaurant has lots of frsh, local fish, and we had a vey nice time!

We had hoped that the weather would be suitable for sailing on Saturday, but unfortunately it was grey, wet, windy an forecast to get worse, rather than better, so we had to give up on that idea. We also decided against walking down to the beach to watch the shoreham airshow, although we had seen the Battle of Britain flight practicing the previous afternoon.

Instead, we enjoyed a late and luxurious breakfast and then most of us went to Bignor, near Arundel, where there was once a large Roman Villa, which has a number of mosaics.

The 1st mosiac was unearthed by  a farmer in 1811, and the land is still owned by the same family, so the mosiacs etc are privately owned rather than owned by English Heritage, or any other official body (although I believe the most recent excavations were carried out with official, expert involvment)


There are very well preserved mosiacs from what was a dining room, a bath house, and a bigger room which is thought to have been for dining and entertaining. here is also a long stretch of corridor.

The villa is tucked away down some very narrow lanes, and there were only a few other people there, which was a good thing from our perspective. We were even able to fit in a cream tea!

Later in the day,after coming home, we walked down to Shoreham beach - it was still grey and drizzly - which seems to be good weather for Kite-Surfing, as the kite surfers were out in force...

The day finished with  home cooked roast lamb followed by local raspberries and ice cream, before I drove home, in order to have Sunday at home to make my peace with Tybalt, (Who has been well looked after by Cheryl, but who diapproves on principal of my going away) and to have a day to do chores before going back to work on Monday morning..

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