Hastings

I've long had a goal to visit Hastings, where William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold back in 1066. It was perhaps the most transformational battle in English history -- everything from laws to language to architecture would be completely different throughout the English-speaking world had the Normans not conquered the Saxons. And it's not far from London, just south of us on the coast in East Sussex. So what was I waiting for?

I made plans with my co-worker Chris to visit yesterday. To make things even more interesting, Chris has a UK driver's license and participates in a car-sharing network, so we could drive down. A road trip in England! That was a first for me in a private car.

We met up about 9 a.m. and got on the road half an hour or so later. The drive was long, to say the least. Hastings is about 65 miles southeast of London, and it took us more than 2 1/2 hours to get down there. But we were in no rush.

Hastings is still a fishing town, and there's an area called the Stade where for hundreds of years fishermen have pulled their boats onto the pebbly beach and hung their nets to dry (above).

We walked along the beach and out onto the pier, where we had a good view of the town. It's a typical British seaside resort, with hotels, restaurants and attractions along the waterfront.

Further along, at Rock-a-Nore Beach, we walked out onto a jetty and while I was taking a picture, a gust of wind lifted my cap from my head and sent it sailing into the ocean. There wasn't much I could do but watch it float away. Even though it was tattered, I was bummed -- it was a cap I bought at Blue Heaven on our cruise five years ago in Key West.  So it goes.

Some of the architecture along the beachfront was interesting...

...and this game on the pier made us laugh. 'Merica!

We had lunch in this pub courtyard, which featured a cat with a partly-amputated tail and a risqué mural of a white bird flashing its rather human-looking buttocks at a leering cormorant. I had a black bean burrito -- not something I often find on a menu in England.

We also stopped at an antique store where I picked up a couple of treasures -- I'll tell you about those tomorrow. And then we got back to the car just in time to catch a parking warden giving us a ticket. We'd overstayed our welcome by 15 minutes or so. Those treasures wound up costing us an extra £25!

From there we drove to the site of the actual Battle of Hastings, about seven miles from town. It's now an English Heritage site and includes the ruins of an old abbey that William the Conqueror supposedly built to atone for the bloodshed there.

This is a view of the battlefield from the abbey, the position of the Saxon battle line. Supposedly, on October 14, 1066, the Normans came marching up that hill. The battle sounds awful -- it took all day and killed thousands of men in hand-to-hand combat with swords, arrows, axes and spears. It's hard to imagine how gruesome it must have been.

(Can you see the big arrow sticking out of the ground out there in the field? Kind of a funny touch.)

These are the remains of the abbey, which continued functioning until Henry VIII broke from the Catholic church in the 1500s. Parts of it were then turned into a country house and, today, a school. Other buildings still stand as ruins like the dormitory (above).

Visitors can walk through medieval rooms with columns and vaulted ceilings where the monks gathered. There's also a large, flat engraved stone marking the spot where King Harold supposedly was killed in the battle.

By this time, it was 6 p.m. and we had to get in the car and get back to London. I didn't get home until about 9 p.m. and no doubt Olga was wondering where I'd been! (She'd been out with her dog walker, though, so she was fine.)