Sunnyside Studio - photographs from around Scotland and beyond

Having never visited Sussex before, apart from a three hour visit to Brighton in 1963, we decided to spend our September holiday in Hastings and fill in a few more places on our travel map.

Most of Hastings is very unremarkable, just an ordinary working town. Parts of it seem somewhat run-down, other areas we found very interesting. The first of these impressions is exemplified by the closed and derelict pier which lends an air of depression to the beach front.

The Stade area of Old Hastings was much more to our liking with its weird black clapboard buildings and huts built out of boats sawn in half. This is the location of Hasting's fishing industry. Like Brighton, my only surviving memory of the place, Hastings has a shingle beach and the fishing boats are launched directly off the beach into the sea. The only place we have seen this before is at Filey on the Yorkshire coast.

There is nothing better than fresh caught fish and Hastings provided ample opportunity to indulge ourselves.