Having failed to make it to all the way from Weymouth to Brighton on our initial trip the previous summer, Steve and I decided to drag our bikes down to the south coast once more, to finish the job.
I can't quite recall how it happened (although there was almost certainly alcohol involved), but it was around this time that our south coast jaunt somehow transformed itself into a mission to cycle the entire British coastline – an undertaking that, unbeknownst to us at this point, would occupy us for much of the next 20 years.
For the time being though, we had a long weekend to get ourselves as far as Brighton, and this was plenty to be getting on with. In fact we had to get to Brighton twice, since our first task was to catch the evening train down from London to Brighton and find a B&B, ready for an early train out to Emsworth the following morning. Having spent most of Thursday afternoon and evening hanging around pubs in London, we eventually rocked up in Brighton around midnight, and were highly fortunate to find ourselves any accommodation at that hour – what a couple of amateurs.