This trip down to the seaside in East Sussex on the south coast of England couldn’t have come at a better time as I was itching for a break from the hustle and bustle of London’s chaotic city life. The original plan was to make a short trip to Rye as we came across an Instagram reel showcasing Rye’s beautiful cobblestone streets and Tudor-style houses, but as we searched for an Airbnb in that region we came across a rare find located in St-Leonards-on-Sea instead. The Airbnb two-bed penthouse maisonette flat with a sea-view balcony was too good of a find to have passed upon (click here to view it on Airbnb), so we hit book, found train tickets and planned our visit to St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings and Rye.

(📸 All photos were taken with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W55)

The Journey There…

The best and worst part of travelling for me is the journey to and from the destination, as you are both mentally exhausted but happy to be travelling with your best mates. Since my friends had travelled from Ilkeston, Derbyshire to stay the night at mine we decided to make tuna mayo and sweetcorn-filled onigiri rice balls (here’s a similar recipe by Amer Ryan) as our train ride snack to save on overpriced train station food. All in all, I’ll say the UK railway system is the most efficient mode of transport (although a bit hefty on the wallet so I’d advise booking your tickets well in advance or consider booking coach tickets), as you get to trug along and see the wonderful scenery passing by, listening to the funny accents of the train announcers on the South Eastern Railway (like this sound bite from Pulp Kitchen Podcast).

After our 1 hour and 40 minutes travel from London St Pancras to St Leonards-on-Sea, we decided to find a local café to chill in before our check-in time. Exhausting our energy battling the windy seafront and heaving our luggage up and down the hilly terrain of St Leonards, we finally found a café to relax in called Bonjour Café. It was a cute rest stop with a nice sea view from the big front store windows.

Happily, we didn’t have to wait too long thanks to our Airbnb hostess, Catherine, who allowed us to drop our bags off early. Catherine gave us a quick tour of the penthouse before giving us recommendations of what to do in the three locations we wanted to visit, saying: “St Leonards-on-Sea is perfect for those who love antique hunting, Hastings is perfect for those who love a good pub scene and Rye is cute for those who have a love for the old English aesthetic”.

St. Leonards-on-Sea

Since my friends are avid fanatics of sea glass and rock forms, we decided to head down to the windy seafront in search of them along the rocky shores. If, like me, you’re new to sea glass, it’s explained as “glass that has been on an extended surfing trip, after decades of being pounded by the waves, weathered by the water it washes up in frosty smooth bits prized by beachcombers” (full video titled, Sea glass: How trash becomes a treasure); my friends hoped to find crystallites and quartz. As we inched closer to the seafront, my friend’s rock collection grew as did my excitement as we neared the rock pools, where I explored the sea life in the crevices. I was so happy to find some sea snails, limpets (small cone-like shells) and strawberry anemones enjoying their time chilling in the rock pools, and like many fellow tourists, I managed to find some empty seashells to take home with me as little souvenirs.

Our dinner choice for that evening had to be a cheeky fish and chips. However, after a quick Google Maps search, we realised that most of the restaurants opened after 6pm and only one was open then, that being Kings Fish Bar & Restaurant. We were a tad disappointed as the fish and chips there could have been better at best, so my advice for those planning to visit would be to research good quality restaurants, note down their opening times and book ahead if you want tastier food than we had.

A Wander Around Hastings Old Town

The following day, with the groceries we bought the previous evening, we made pancakes and ate them alongside some fruits that our Airbnb hostess had provided for us. We ate upstairs in the spacious living room with large windows that let us bask in some morning sunlight as we planned what to do with the rest of our day. After a Google search and a discussion, my friends decided to book tickets to see Hastings True Crime Museum (the tickets were £7.50 pp) and then book train tickets later to spend the rest of the day in Rye.

Since the walk from the penthouse to Hastings Old Town was around 15 minutes (side note: bring comfortable walking shoes as Hastings is quite a hilly place) we had plenty of time to get ourselves ready. In comparison to my friends, I wasn’t as excited to visit the True Crime Museum as I was rather creeped out by the whole experience. Still, if you’re an avid true crime fan like my friends and love watching and listening to true crime stories, then I strongly recommend you go as the museum includes everything true crime related, from names of famous true crime stories, real-life artefacts, replicas of famous malicious true crime stories, photo shoot spots and even a little gift shop. Even though the museum looked relatively small it was packed-full of displays, which took us around an hour to finish looking.

After the chilling experience, we popped into the antique shop next door, Arthur Green’s Antiques Centre and were pleasantly surprised at what we were able to unearth for £20 in total: a Brownie No2 model F – 120 Medium Format Roll Film Camera (a vintage box camera with its case), a Vintage Kodak Brownie 127 Camera and six vintage postcards (some with handwritten messages on the back). The old man (I’m guessing named Arthur) who owned the shop was so sweet as he suggested we look at cheaper postcards at the back and made us a discount offer for the two cameras (he only accepts cash so make sure you have that on you).

A Half-Day Trip to Rye

With our purchased return tickets from the in-person kiosk at Old Hastings train station (£5.25 per return ticket), we began our journey and arrived 30 minutes later in the idyllic cobble-stoned town of Rye. Upon arriving we decided the best thing to do was grab food before exploring, so we headed directly to find The Cobble Tea Room for some afternoon tea (keep your eye out for its small signage because it can be easily missed).

The Tea Room was the definition of old English tea time aesthetics as the little café was furnished with antique furniture and vintage décor making it the perfect spot for afternoon tea. The scones were so buttery, delicious and warm that I couldn’t resist but order another after eating the one that came with the No.2 Cobbles Set Afternoon Tea Menu (which included a sandwich, homemade traditional scone butter, jam & cream with pot of house tea for one – £11.50). So if you are a fan of strong English breakfast tea, homemade scones, sandwiches and cakes, you’ll want to include this spot as part of your itinerary for Rye – but, keep in mind, if you would like a taste of their lunch menu head to Rye a bit earlier as when we arrived we could only select from the afternoon tea menu (check the menu out on Google Maps).

Thankfully, we still had some time to wander around a few of the shops before they began closing around 5 pm, so we explored some antique stores, bought old traditional British sweets from a little old man at Britcher & Rivers sweet shop, and stumbled upon a cute cultural handmade gift shop named The Paper Place. The store owner, Anwesha, was very welcoming and friendly when we showed interest in the various handmade notebooks, gift bags, beautiful papers and boxes, telling us the origin and makers’ story behind their crafts. Each type of paper had its own backstory to tell as each item was recycled from materials such as wool, silk and even leftover sari fabric, and most of the detailing was made by screen printing from small communities in India. The items in the store were too tempting not to purchase, so we ended up walking away with little notebooks with handmade flower petal silk paper, intricate Indian print-screen fabric-inspired die-cut gift boxes and customed bookmarks that Anwesha hand-lettered herself and gave us for free (check out their Instagram page for more details).

After checking in some pubs around Rye we realised most places were fully booked out, so we ended up waiting for our return train back to Old Hastings Town and made a reservation at Ye Olde Pumphouse, as most of the reviews stated the pub had: “Friendly staff, good food, big portions, great selection of beers and real ales.” We were exhausted from the full day of walking, so the train ride back acted as a perfect break before having to walk another 20-30 minutes to find the pub house.

As Catherine had said, Hastings night scene lit up ready for the perfect pub crawling spot, and we soon found the pub was well worth the walk. The reviews had been spot on as our waitress was super friendly suggesting we be re-seated from the pub area to the quieter restaurant area, and my order of chicken, leek and bacon pie with mash and veggies was indeed a large portion and super delicious (check out their website if you are planning to visit).

Exploring the Last Parts of Hastings

Before checking out of our Airbnb, we wanted to leave our hostess a postcard review, like many other guests had left previously on her bullet board, so we chose an empty postcard she kept near the board and wrote a little thank you note together about her beautiful penthouse Airbnb—a special thank you to our hostess Catherine for making our stay at St Leonards-on-Sea a perfect one!

From yesterday’s walk to Hastings Old Town, we noticed that Hastings Museum & Art Gallery was a 5-minute walk away, so we decided to use a couple of our remaining hours to explore it. We didn’t realise how spacious the museum and art gallery would be as it took us an hour and a half to fully walk around and see all the exhibits that ranged from the History of Hastings to a full taxidermy display to even exhibitions on Eastern cultural artefacts. The most interesting exhibit, however, was on a local Hastings resident who managed to fool the world into thinking he was a Native American Indian residing by the name Grey Owl (read more about him on the Hastings Museum & Art Gallery website). And of course, we took many aesthetic pictures in and around the museum as you can see below.

Afterwards, we headed back to Hastings Old Town to see the difference in daylight. Since it was the weekend, it was quite crowded, however I quite liked it as it reminded me of London’s Camden Town. There were quite a lot of local artist gift shops which was perfect for buying last-minute souvenirs for our friends and family. We also visited the Flower Makers Museum which appeared on our Google search for activities to do around Hastings, however, there wasn’t much information on the place so we didn’t realise we had to pay £5 per person to visit the ‘museum’. I would suggest passing up on visiting as it is more for designers and makers who need flower-making supplies rather than for tourists to come to visit as the supposed museum was a small basement filled with dust and old flower-making designs and supplies, which wasn’t that interesting or worth the money to see.

Highlights from the Trip

If you enjoyed reading about the spots I visited during my aesthetic girl’s trip to St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings and Rye, I saved all the places we visited in a curated Google Maps page so please feel free to use it when planning your trip. There were many activities and spots we did not get to do and visit like the famous Hastings battlefield or ride up one of Hastings Cliff railway, which I’ll have to add to the itinerary when I revisit Hastings, but down below I have bullet-pointed some of my recommendations and tips of what I would do differently if I were to ever revisit.

Booking A Stay In St Leonards-on-Sea:

• Book your old English seaside town stay with Catherine at her Airbnb penthouse (side note: if you like doing morning stretches and yoga like myself, the upstairs living room was the perfect spacious spot to do so)
  
• Make your lunch or buy food outside of the train station to save some money
  
• Call Catherine to see if you can drop your bags off before check-in time, as it will save you from lugging them around (pack light if you can, as there’s a lot of hill climbing)
  
• Ask Catherine or a local what they would recommend doing, as locals know best
  
• Go beach combing and sea creature finding along St Leonards-on-Sea rock beach
  
• Bring lots of thick layers if you get cold easily as being by the coast was very windy
  
• Bring comfortable walking shoes as St Leonards-on-Sea is very hilly
  
• Do a Google search of decent restaurants and make a booking if you plan on eating in St Leonards-on-Sea or Hastings during the evening
  
  

When In Rye:

• Have afternoon tea at Cobbles Tea House (go earlier in the day if you want to try their lunch menu)
  
• Buy old nostalgic British sweets at Britcher & Rivers sweet shop
  
• Pop into The Paper Place and ask the owner, Anwesha, about the story behind her store
  
• Stroll along the cobble-stoned Mermaid Street and take in the Tudor-style architecture
  
  

What To Do Around Hastings Old Town:

• Book tickets for Hastings True Crime Museum (only if you’re super interested in it)
  
• Check out the antique stores around Hastings and Rye, as you can find rarer and cheaper items compared to bigger cities, but remember to bring cash along.
  
• Explore Hastings Museum & Art Gallery for free
  
• If you want to splurge get local chocolate and hot chocolate at Only Coco Chocolates
  
• Look out for local artist’s work that works as great souvenirs