By Rebecca Maer
There are three main reasons to travel by bus to Brighton rather than drive:
1. The ability to gaze lingeringly at rolling downland, a coastal panorama and the skyscape without a head-on collision
2. The voyeuristic frisson from the top deck with a grandstand view of other people’s gardens and, if you’re lucky, into their windows
3. That smug Greta Thunberg glow achieved by travelling on low-emission public transport, thus removing one petrol-slurping lump of metal from the roads
If you are not old enough to have a free bus pass, a finishing line the Government seems determined to move further away each year, it’s not bad value.
For £5.50, you have the hop-on and hop-offability of buses between Shoreham and Eastbourne with a 24-hour adult network saver.
That amount does not quite stretch to one hour in Russell Road car park near Brighton seafront (£5.95 drive-in price for 60 golden minutes, since you ask)
I do not have any links to Brighton & Hove buses and I pay my own fare – I just like being nosey from the top deck when I have the time.
But either deck is fine and dandy for this glorious trip, which takes about an hour. It’s 60 minutes you might otherwise spend doom scrolling through fitness videos you’ll never do and home makeovers you don’t care about, so time well spent.
Let’s start at the beginning. One of the best parts is early on: after the bus has puffed up the hill past the Old Town and the golf course, the panorama of this eastern edge of the Downs opens up.
There’s a low-flying light aircraft vibe as the bus glides along past Halfway Cottages with the shining sea and the landmark Belle Tout lighthouse to the left and wave upon wave of rolling downland to the right.
We swoop through East Dean, past Friston church and onward to a high-flying view of the beautiful Cuckmere Haven meander and a glimpse of the coastguard cottages silhouetted by the sea.
The next hill takes us into Chyngton, the edge of Seaford, and a clear view at the bus stop into one of the neatest gardens in East Sussex. Maybe that’s why they keep it so tidy, for top-deck scrutiny.
If you’ve accidentally caught the 12A, you now have an extra 15-minute or so tour of the backstreets of Seaford, which is no hardship and affords plenty more snooping opportunities into homes and gardens.
A canter on the flat past Tide Mills brings us into Newhaven and a clear view of UTC Harbourside, a specialist college which was only open for four years, closing in 2019.
Which is odd when you consider that the Coast To Capital local enterprise partnership reported in 2017 in its Newhaven Economic Profile that the town has a younger population than the wider region and a higher percentage of people aged 15 and under.
And which is why sometimes a bus ride is more than just moving from here to there. It gives you the time you don’t have when driving to think about stuff.
We can also reflect on why such a delightful harbour town, once full of fishing boats bobbing by wooden jetties, became so neglected. We won’t find the answer during this trip, but a wider awareness is always a good thing.
The next urban run is through Peacehaven, a clifftop grid of bungalows with no discernible town centre and bizarrely inappropriate road names such as Roderick Avenue and Gladys Avenue.
It was developed in the First World War by Charles Neville, who had bought the land and favoured a US-style grid system. The high point is the glimpses of sea through endless cul-de-sacs of bungalows to the left.
Travelling through it seems to go on for an unfeasibly long time, past intermittent clusters of fast-food outlets and estate agents. It’s so odd, we’re getting off next time, schlepping along the road and writing a separate review.
Our journey segues through Telscombe Cliffs, which appears to comprise traffic lights and a petrol station, before the glorious clifftop stretch to Saltdean, a sky palette of white, grey, blue and prime views of the waves rolling in.
After a dip down into Rottingdean, it’s the home stretch past the sweeping drive of slightly-scary looking Roedean school and the curve of the marina before the start of Brighton’s glowing Regency facades and empty eastern beaches.
The bus powers through to Brighton station but we prefer to alight around North Street and dive into a hipster joint for a coffee which takes half an hour to make.
Aside from a mooch around The Lanes, there’s so much to look forward to – chiefly, the bus journey home to Eastbourne.
:: The Eastbourne Reporter always pays its way and reviews anonymously
