Beachy Head- Rob Graham

I was online this Saturday and saw the above picture with the caption "Beachy Head, England". Ignoring the fact it had more photoshop done to it than Hollywood has plastic surgery, I was curious to see where this beautiful nature scene was located. It turned out to be on the southern coast of England; I checked to see if there were any trains that headed in that direction and found one going to the small coastal town of Eastbourne, only an hour and a half away.

So on a whim, Maxx, Tate, Heidi, Carly, and I took off on a train to Eastbourne. This was the first trip I planned, so naturally, it was almost a complete disaster.

I take the southern service train to work (about 30 minutes away) and use my oyster card (tube/subway pass that you can top up with money) for all of my trips. I assumed that the oyster card worked for all southern service train rides, and didn't even worry about it as we scanned in and got on board. When we got off and tried to scan out in Eastbourne, our cards weren't working. Apparently, you can use your Oyster card to get to a certain distance outside the city before it stops working. The people working the gate were friendly, laughed at our American misfortune, and gave us a break on the price for our tickets. 

After we made it out of the train station, it was time to figure out how to get to the cliffs. We asked around and got the general direction. The plan was walk to the coast and follow it until we got there, taking some pictures and enjoy the fact we were seeing sunlight for the first time in awhile. We finally asked an older gentleman how long to Beachy Head from the city center, he responded "Well, 12 miles and the average person walks 3 miles an hour so maybe about 4 hours," I swear it looked closer from google maps.

We laughed, grabbed some lunch in town, and decided to split a taxi to take us to the chalk cliffs of England. After walking around, enjoying the scenery, and realizing how lucky we were...

we made it with plenty of time and caught the beginning of the sunset. This day definitely gets chalked up as one of the best. Can't believe how lucky I am to be in this place and have the opportunities that are around me.  And the scenery is just as magnificent without the photoshop.