
Rather unexpectedly, I found myself in Southend-On-Sea. It was something to do with a local families trip that a friend was helping to organize. Regardless, £10 and a small 90 minute coach trip for sticks of rock, arcades, a theme park and a pier? Yes please!
I find there is something incredibly calming about the sea. Well, at least a calm sea, stretching out to the horizon (or, at least in the case of Southend - nearly to the horizon). A mass of water, rippling away. Sea and sky meeting in an arched line of blue.

Back on slightly dryer land, and away from things made of wood, there is a fair amount to do in Southend. There's a theme park, Adventure Island, which can swallow an unlimited amount of money in a very short space of time if you're not careful. Soft-toy side stalls intermixed with rides are a great amount of fun. I did go on the big rollercoaster, Rage (the big yellow thing, right) - which was a hilarious 90 second shot of pure adrenaline. Adventure mini-golf was also good fun, if not very tactical by the end of 18 holes of interestingly decorated (but otherwise fairly vanilla) putting.
I did snap a few shots from my phone while going round Southend. On the pier I took a few. Once I'd got them into Google Plus' photo collection, I discovered that some deep magic on a Google server had stitched three of the photos together automatically without my intervention. It's not perfect, but I was quite impressed by the effect of the result!
![]() |
I didn't even ask for this picture, Google's Picasa Web Albums auto-magic stitch just made it appear! |
I tried to take a shot going the other way, from land out over the pier. However the M&S coffee shop window I took it out of caused a huge amount of reflection in the picture, and it looked pretty gloomy (the clouds had started to set in by that point). So in a recent effort to be more arty, I had a got at it with my graphics tablet - the end result, I think, isn't too bad.
![]() |
My bleak photo of the view back taken through the window of an M&S coffees hop didn't work out so well. Lucky I've been playing with a tablet, so I photo-edited it a bit to make it more cheeful. |