SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE F5
BY GEORGE BASSIt’s impossible to enter the
coastal resort of Hastings in East
Sussex, England, and not be
schooled in its medieval history.
While I was buying our train
tickets, posters reminded me that
the town is close to the point at
which the Normans invaded Eng-
land in longboats and overthrew
King Harold II in the gruesome
Battle of Hastings in 1066. It’s a
defeat so firmly etched into Brit-
ish minds that local insurance
providers have incorporated the
date into their TV jingles.
On arriving in the town and
entering an underpass, I saw a
mosaic celebrating the town’s her-
itage: charging knights, windsurf-
ers, and a kite-flying mother and
child. The images were rendered
in brown and blue tiles, and
looked as vivid as the bingo halls
lining the town’s seafront.
My girlfriend and I were visit-
ing Hastings for some stone skim-
ming, sea glass collecting and ar-
cade death matches with our 7-
year-old daughter. We were keen
to see the town’s recent regenera-
tion.
Hastings wasn’t always the
marketable mix of tourist facili-
ties and medieval lore it is today.
As package holidays to the conti-
nent became the choice vacation
of many Brits in the 1970s, English
seaside resorts faced economic
hardship.
A recent $34 million invest-
ment boost has rejuvenated the
area’s arts and culture scene. Dur-
ing our visit, tourists dashed be-
tween museums focused on true
crime, crafting artificial flowers
from velvet, and beach fishing.
The last was once key to the area’s
economy, but it faces an uncertain
future due to Brexit, which was
favored by local voters in the 2016
referendum.
Despite it being the October
offseason, the Hastings streets
were sunny as we began explor-
ing. Our daughter ran across the
beach, and I got flashes of my
childhood trips to the sea.
Because we live in East Lon-
don, a visit to the southeast coast
meant an 80-mile drive, and it felt
like landing in a different conti-
nent. I can remember my dad
teaching me how to trap crabs in a
jar; picking up the neighboring
army base on my transistor radio;
and seeing so many ice cream
flavors available on the beach that
my neck would ache reading the
menu that towered above me on
the wall. Knowing I had the po-
tential to make my daughter as
excited as I had been felt like a big
responsibility.
After checking in at our guest-
house — where the friendly recep-
tionist was happy to take us in
early and show us to our room
atop a spiral staircase — we head-
ed for our first destination: the
“Old Town” of Hastings. Parts of
the area date to the 8th century;
today, its narrow cobbled streets
are teeming with bubble tea bou-
tiques, mussel cafes, Tudor hous-
es and modern bistros with tables
made from galvanized steel, their
interiors lit by multicolored lan-
terns.
You can buy coffee and cake for
about $7, or try one of the cock-
tails listed on brown paper
menus: Whistling Gypsies, Hello
Sailors.
We climbed the cliffs via side
streets to reach the St. Clements
Caves, formed around 14,000 B.C.
and used as a lair by buccaneers in
the 17th and 18th centuries. To-
day, they’re explorable as part of
the Smugglers Adventure.
A vampire at reception sold us
passes — it was nearly Halloween
— and we walked downhill
through tunnels draped in lumi-
nous cobwebs that extended more
than an acre underground. Blue
spotlights gave the rock walls a
lunar quality, while effigies of Jo-
seph Golding, who dug into the
caves in the 1820s, loomed from
stone hollows like gargoyles.
We spent about an hour under-ground, posing by notices offering
100 guinea rewards (about
$30,000 today) for the capture of
smugglers dead or alive “by order
of the Crown.” Our daughter loved
pushing the different language
buttons on the talking pirates, as
well as typing vowels into a repro-
duction Morse key to signal mod-
el Royal Navy boats.
After pizza on the seafront, we
took an evening walk along the
shoreline between lifeguard huts,
which glowed white in the moon-light and seemed sinister with
their flags lowered. Waves shat-
tered on the beach, the sound
blurring with traffic as we walked
back to our guesthouse.
In the morning, we enjoyed
breakfast at the Hanushka Coffee
House among rows of old books,
green glass reading lamps, and
old-fashioned radios playing war-
time swing tunes. We had planned
to ride the funicular railway (ca-
ble cars) — the steepest in the
United Kingdom — to the cliff-tops, but the West Hill Lift termi-
nal was closed for maintenance.
A shame: I had traveled on one
in my childhood and hoped to
reexperience the cream-and-
brown carriages from a bygone
era. You can’t enjoy their diagonal
ascent and not feel a little like
James Bond fighting Jaws at a
high altitude in the 1979 film
“Moonraker.”
Instead, we took the steps, oc-
casionally looking below us at
beached trawlers with names
such as “Christine” and “Moon-
shine.” The wet sand beyond them
shone like a lens; a little farther
were the jutting remains of the old
pier and its restored counterpart.
Pieces of timber rose from the sea
like fingers.
It was hard not to think of the
infamous original Smalls Light-
house, which was erected on oak
pillars off Pembrokeshire, Wales,
in the 1770s. One of its keepers
had died on duty, and his trapped
bunkmate had become unhinged.
I had listened to a musical inter-
pretation of their ordeal by the
local experimental composer
Plinth, and now couldn’t get the
album’s striking cover art out of
my head.
Eager for a more cheerful ma-
rine experience, we climbed down
to Rock-a-Nore Road and visitedthe Blue Reef Aquarium. Hallow-
een celebrations continued here
with glow-in-the-dark skeletons
positioned between tanks of
gleaming mullet.
Our daughter loved seeing the
creatures from the 2016 animated
movie “Finding Dory” up close,
and arriving at feeding time
meant we got to look up from the
observatory tunnel as sharks
darted to and fro, chasing de-
scending flakes of food. Side
rooms offered salamanders, poi-
son dart frogs and tarantulas in
reassuringly sturdy terrariums.
Outside, the free Shipwreck
Museum housed a charming col-
lection of artifacts from the hun-
dreds of vessels wrecked in the
English Channel. Visitors could
peruse the 400-year-old salvaged
cannons, French muskets from
1820, and 16th-century Portu-
guese maps (on which Australia
wasn’t depicted). Each exhibit
had been recovered by local div-
ers; patrons could test whether
they would make efficient treas-
ure hunters by trying to haul car-
go on a reproduction rope pulley.
Returning to the seafront, we
followed the music and cotton
candy to the Flamingo amuse-
ment park. Our daughter picked
her way through a mechanical
funhouse, then fed twopenny
coins into slot machines. Thirty
years ago, I had visited a similar
arcade at the nearby Camber
Sands and blown all my pocket
money (plus everything I could
beg from my mom) on a RoboCop
game and a light-gun shooting
range. I was delighted to see the
same gleeful abandonment in my
child.
We left Hastings a few days
before Nov. 5, or Guy Fawkes
Night as it’s known in Britain.
Despite the popularity of Hallow-
een, winter nights in the United
Kingdom are dominated by com-
munal bonfires commemorating
the failure of the 1605 Gunpowder
Plot to blow up the House of Lords
and assassinate King James I. The
nearby town of Lewes proudly
boasts “Britain’s most dangerous
Guy Fawkes celebration.”
Per tradition, the town bonfire
had involved the burning of
“Guys”: effigies of Fawkes and
unpopular media personalities.
As we crossed Romney Marsh,
I wondered how many burned
Boris Johnsons would be found
among the ashes.Bass is a writer based in Kent,
England. Find him on Twitter:
@GeorgeBas5.More to explore than medieval lore on the English coastNICHOLAS BAILEY/SHUTTERSTOCKGEORGE BASS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Visitors to Hastings in East Sussex, England, can hit the
beaches, top, or explore the St. Clements Caves, above, which
are explorable as part of the Smugglers Adventure.the trees and bushes around us,
casting sparkling light that guided
us through the dark paths. The
four of us emerged from the
Woodland Garden, an informal
area filled with camellias and
staghorn ferns, and found our-
selves on a paved terrace equipped
with drink stands. Murmuring
along to the Christmas songs sung
much more skillfully by Ella
Fitzgerald, the four of us clutched
each other — and cups of mulled
wine — under our umbrellas. It
felt like our own pandemic-era
version of a glamorous garden
party — and my own cinematic
moment.homes, and those stories are great,
but there’s so many more stories
here,” Newport said.
The land occupied by the estate
is on the traditional territory of
the Ramaytush Ohlone, an Indig-
enous people who lived in the Bay
Area before the Spanish occupa-
tion and mission system wiped
out their numbers. (The estate
now has a land declaration posted
on its site and an exhibit in the
visitor center about the native
people who once lived there.)
“Stories of Resilience,” the ex-
hibit I saw in March, highlighted
the stories of Filoli staff who faced
adversity because of nationality,
race or ethnicity. For example, Tei-
kichi Taga, the estate’s Japanese
butler, was forcibly relocated and
incarcerated with his family in an
internment camp during World
War II. An information panel
notes that census records don’t
show any Black staff at Filoli while
either family lived at the estate,
and points out that the most
sought-after jazz musicians of the
time, such as Duke Ellington and
Louis Armstrong, were not among
the musicians who performed
there.
The formal gardens blend two
English garden styles — 18th -
century Georgian gardens and the
more formal English Renaissance
style — and were completed in
- Created by landscape de-
signer Bruce Porter and horticul-
turist Isabella Worn, the beautiful
and meticulously maintained
spaces are divided into “rooms”
separated by hedges and trees,
and are the sites of spectacular
displays of daffodils and tulips in
the spring and roses in the sum-
mer. Passing through the rainbow
gradient of blooms in the Rose
Garden, I milled around peaceful-
ly, letting the sun warm my face
and the wind blow the hem of my
dress around my ankles. Many
families were out for Mother’s
Day, including mine, and the
bright colors and unhurried at-
mosphere made everything feel
lighter.
FILOLI FROM F3
Brick and wrought-iron garden
gates and doors, many the hosts of
thick accumulations of climbing
wisteria and ivy, connect the
rooms and are one of the few
reminders of passing time. My fa-
vorite part of the Walled Garden,
an expansive formal area subdi-
vided into discrete rooms just off
the glass-paneled garden house, is
the Wedding Place, a terraced
grassy staircase where the Roths’
daughter Berenice wed in 1941.
Another jewel of the property,
the Sunken Garden is filled with
water lilies and flanked by dra-
matic flower beds, and it sparkles
just as brightly in the sun of thewarmer months as it does on win-
ter holiday evenings. Sitting in
deck chairs under the glass awn-
ing among potted flower displays
in front of the glamorous pool, my
mother and I have passed many a
leisurely afternoon.
The estate wasn’t constructed
just for aesthetic beauty, though it
has that in spades. It’s a working
estate that hosts a nature preserve
with a peaceful, mile-long trail
that’s open to hikers, fruit-produc-
ing orchards and an apiary that
produces honey made by bees that
pollinate the lavender fields and
flowers. Local community groups
take part in nature and historicaleducation programs on-site, too.
The estate stayed open for much of
the pandemic, with adjusted pro-
cedures in line with state and local
guidelines; the county recently
lifted its indoor mask mandate for
vaccinated guests, but masks are
still required for unvaccinated vis-
itors.
My family’s visit to see the
house decorated for Christmas
and the gardens draped with
lights began on an inauspicious
note, at the end of a long work-
week with omicron casting a
growing shadow over the holiday.
My soon-to-be sister-in-law joined
us on a brisk December nightwhen the rain was coming down
in sheets; it was the first time I’ve
ever had to psych myself up for a
visit. We perked up while strolling
through the warm house, which
was filled with towering Christ-
mas trees bedazzled with baubles
the size of my head and re-
creations of sweets that would
have been served at early-20th-
century holiday parties that made
my teeth ache.
But even with our soggy shoes
and cold noses, wandering the
gardens in the rain had a magical
feel that I wasn’t prepared for. The
rain splintered on the ground and
refracted off the bulbs adorningEach season a t Filoli estate’s stunning gardens is filled with botanical delights
HELEN CAREFOOT/THE WASHINGTON POST
In the Walled Garden, designed in the more traditional English Renaissance style, tulips bloom in spring at the Filoli estate in California.
Crab apple and cherry trees also grow inside the space enclosed by 10-foot-high brick walls.If You Go
Filoli Historic House & Garden
86 Cañada Rd., Woodside, Calif.
650-364-8300
filoli.org
This estate about 30 minutes
south of San Francisco is a
National Trust for Historic
Preservation property and
designated California Historical
Landmark. Its stunning gardens
showcase a vast collection of
seasonal plants, flowers and trees.
Visitors may take self-guided tours
of the house and hike at the nature
preserve. Download a map from its
site. A shop sells garden supplies,
home goods, live plants, honey and
fruit butters produced at the
estate’s farm, and a cafe sells grab-
and-go meals, pastries and drinks.
Reservations required. Gardens
open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; house
open 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; check
website for hours of seasonal
events, such as Holidays at Filoli.
Tickets include access to the
house, garden and Estate Trail, a
one-mile self-guided walk. General
admission $25 for adults; $22
seniors 65 and over; students,
teachers and military $20; and
children 5 to 17 $15; check website
for special event admission. For the author’s suggestions
on what to eat, where to stay and
what to do, head to
washingtonpost.com/travel.