Seven Sisters

Rachel's brother, Ryan, hopped the pond back in late July.  His first stop was a Mumford and Sons festival down in Brighton (directly south of London).  After his festival, we met him down at the coast to visit Seven Sisters, a national park with enormous white chalk cliffs that rival (if not surpass!) the "white cliffs of Dover".  I love this panorama that Chris shot -- those itsy-bitsy dots next to the cliff are people!

If you want a little outdoor exploring in the UK, this is an easy place to visit.  With National Rail's GroupSave and an unlimited Brighton bus pass, the three of us did all our traveling to-and-from London Bridge Station and all along the coast for less than £30 (total!).  Not a bad deal to sit back, relax, and take in the sights of the countryside!

Although white chalky cliffs are all along England's southern and southeastern coast, the big beautiful ones are at Seven Sisters.  Since there's no town or port to protect, the Seven Sisters are allowed to slough off their outer layers and reveal new bright-white chalk.

Once off the #12 (or #13x) bus at the park's cute little visitor center, it's a 3 mile hike along country paths through peaceful fields and dales to the coastline.  Unfortunately, for us, it was an extremely hot day for the UK, but the views were worth it!

There are two viewing sites -- one overlooks the cliffs and the other is at the cliff base.  We first aimed for the overlook and then hiked down to the beach at the cliff base.

That should be "beach" because it was rocks rocks rocks!  Dozens of wide and extremely fast moving streams kept us from fording all the way to the base of the cliffs, but we did wade a bit in the nice cool water.  Chris and I figured that returning to go tubing should be on our list of UK-to-dos!

We wrapped up the day at the trail-head pub, the Golden Galleon  ;-)
Brits can do a mean savory pie, and fish n' chips is no joke!  The fish they give you is as big as your forearm!