In addition to what I described yesterday about what has been built here, there is also an hotel,a cinema, a health club, a bowling alley and a pub.In one of the squares they held a fair trade market.
You get some sense of the scale of the place from this aerial photo.It has a 1,200 berths for residents. That's big
I don't know who pays for it, but there was a lot of street entertainment. There was a small stage where a wide range of performers played all day.
For me, though, as a samba band player, and one wondering how the band's performance would go at the wedding today, it was great to hear a band start up in the marina.They played on and off throughout the day and processed regularly through the shopping centre.On their last piece one of the women abandoned her instrument and did some great dancing.
I spoke to one of them afterwards as they seemed to play slightly different music to our band. They have only been going since 2007 and are called Maracatu Cruzeiro do Sul and are named after the Maracatu style of Brazilian samba, which comes from the north of the country.
When I looked them up on the web site afterwards it was clear this was a small 7 person turnout from a much larger band. there is also a Brighton School of Music, so its a really lively scene here.
In a remaindered books shop I found a copy of Paul Heiney's Maritime Britain for £1.99.I wished I'd come across this before I set out, as its packed with stuff about the places I've been.For example, he explains that they built the lighthouse at Beachy Head in 1904 at the strange location of the bottom of the cliff rather than the top of it because there is often low cloud and mist. There had been an earlier one at the top (The Belle Toute). One of the photos I put on the log yesterday showed low cloud over the top,so obviously this was not unusual.So I'll show it again.
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