Once we have completed our Scandinavian adventure, the Current Future Plan is to sell Farnham and move into a bungalow somewhere else in England. To that end, we have decided to go and check out possible new places to eventually live. Bear in mind that this is planning for a long, distant, future and there’s every possibility that, like most of our plans, it will never happen.
Anyway, as part of the Current Future Plan, today we drove down to Pagham to check it out. Mirinda had previously trawled the real estate websites and discovered it has a lot of single storey houses and was by the sea. She has always wanted to live by the sea. So, today, we headed down to check it out.
19 days to go
Pagham boasts the oldest pram race in the world. Held every year on Boxing Day, regardless of the weather, thousands line the streets to watch a bunch of crazy people running with prams in front of them. It also claims that the original bungalows were, in fact, train carriages, which might go some way to explaining the cabins on the deck opposite the Pagham Café, where we had lunch.
The signs above the doors read ‘Hav’s Carriage’ and ‘Hav Not’s Carriage’. I can’t say what they’re like inside because the woman from the restaurant couldn’t open the doors.
We were eating outside because of a misunderstanding. Before leaving home, I checked out the café to see if they were dog friendly. According to the Internet, they were. According to the woman at the café, they are only dog friendly outside. The seats directly outside are just picnic benches whereas, Mirinda needs a chair with a back.
After being told we couldn’t have the dogs inside, we initially said to cancel our orders and we’d go find a nice friendly pub instead but, the woman at the café suggested we sit outside, by the train carriage cabins. There were two proper chairs there and, while Ms Cranky Pants put in a brief appearance, we had a nice lunch.
Mind you, it was rather blustery outside the train carriage cabins though not as windy as it had been when we walked along the shingle beach.
I had some difficulty holding the camera for the selfie above.
Having sampled the delights of Pagham hospitality, we headed along the coast to Aldwick, which seemed nice, before hitting the snarling, bumper to bumper traffic back home.
The verdict is a hard no on Pagham. It felt to me like the sort place where you go to die; a place where you put on your slippers, take out a crossword, have the news on a 24 hour loop and simply stop living. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There’s plenty of people who would welcome this sort of quiet retirement from life. But not us.
Whatever we end up doing, where ever we end up living, it won’t be in Pagham.
