House › Weekend Notes
Weekend Notes
What the desk tells guests when they ask how to spend two nights here. Written by the people who work the front room, corrected when something changes.
Friday, arriving late
Trains reach the station until half past eleven and the walk down is fifteen minutes, downhill the whole way, lit from the war memorial onwards. If you arrive after the desk closes, ring the night bell to the left of the door; it sounds in the back room and someone comes within a few minutes with your key and a jug of water.
The night market on the parade runs from five until eleven, so most people drop bags and walk straight back up. It is worth doing once: eight stalls, two of them cooking, the rest selling records, prints and secondhand books. Then come back for the 21:30 sitting rather than eating standing up on the boards.
Saturday, from seven in the morning
Coffee at seven comes from the kiosk at the slipway, which opens for the fishing boats and does not care whether anyone else turns up. Take it down to the rocks and watch the second boat come in. The swim group meets at the tide pool at quarter past eight and does twenty minutes, no more, followed by the rinse room and breakfast in the front room until half past ten.
Late morning is for the point: twelve minutes south along the path, past the lifeboat slip, out to where the rock pools sit under the headland. Take shoes with grip. The tide chalked on the board by the ramp door tells you whether the far pools are reachable; two hours either side of low water is the answer most days.
Afternoons split people in two. Half stay on the pool deck until the light goes off the terrazzo at about four. The others walk north to the parade, where the picture house runs a matinee at two and an evening programme at eight, and the arcade on the corner has its 1950s cabinets still working on old coins bought at the counter.
The three gaming venues on the parade open in the afternoon and keep their own rules and their own age checks. They are separate businesses with no connection to this house. If you plan to visit one, take identification and decide in advance what you are prepared to spend and when you are leaving.
Sunday, before you go
Breakfast runs an hour longer, until half past eleven, and the tide pool stays open all afternoon whatever the weather does. Check-out is eleven but bags live behind the desk until the evening train, so most guests swim after checking out and change in the rinse room. The supper club serves one sitting at seven for anyone staying a third night, and the house goes quiet at eleven.
Things guests wish they had known
- The wind turns onshore most afternoons; the pool deck is warmest before two.
- The walk back from the parade takes twelve minutes at night, not six — the boards are uneven past the bandstand.
- Card payment is unreliable at the night market. The desk has change.
- The picture house sells out for the eight o'clock programme on wet Saturdays.
- Nothing on the parade needs booking except the theatre, and that only in season.
If your evening includes the venues
Eat first, take identification, agree a leaving time with whoever you are with, and treat any money involved as gone the moment it is out of your pocket. Nobody — not us, not them — can tell you how an evening of play will end, and any place that suggests otherwise is not worth your walk. Support services are listed on the responsible play page.