Tangmere

Tangmere
Originally uploaded by fred pipes.

It's not often that Brighton is visited by a steam loco - and even rarer for such a beautiful beast as 'Spam-can' Battle of Britain class 34067 Tangmere (built at Brighton in 1947) to steam through my local station, London Road. So I dragged myself up at the crackle of the dawn at 8.55am to cop the train to Faversham Hop Festival belching out filthy smoke along the Lewes line. I knew it was coming back to Brighton at 10.12pm so thought I'd watch it steam over the viaduct. That would have made a fantastic photo in daylight! Tangmere will be this way again, passing through Preston Park, Hove and Worthing, for a trip to Bath and Bristol on 22 September. The rest of the day? A 22-mile bike circular from Berwick (not -on-Tweed!) with the Clarion.