Ten favourite Out-of-London destinations
1) South Coast Downlander: One rail ticket, one bank holiday, ten south coast resorts. Madness, but a lot of fun. [photos]All of these resorts, and several more besides, are served by the Southern railway network. And they do a special one day e-ticket called the All Network Downlander, which allows you to use any Southern train for the princely cost of £12.50. You have to buy it at least two days in advance, and it's only valid off-peak (that's after 10am on weekdays, or any time weekends and bank holidays). You have to print it out yourself, and you have to carry round some ID like a driving licence or utility bill to prove you're not a fraud. I had to wave my print-out a lot yesterday, especially to get through ticket gates, but then I did travel on 12 different trains to get about from one end of Sussex to the other. My journey would have cost a fortune on umpteen separate tickets, so the rail rover is an absolute bargain. For those of you who live along or near the Sussex coast there's an even cheaper version, the South Coast Downlander, which costs only £10 so long as you stray no further north than Haywards Heath.
From £10 you can travel to and from any location in the South Downs area by Southern train services or available bus services.
The South Coast Downlander e-ticket enables you and up to four other people to travel. The e-ticket covers Southern stations (including Brighton, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bognor Regis, Haywards Heath, Chichester, Eastbourne, Hastings, Rye and Ashford) and unlimited bus travel within the Downs area.
Cost of Tickets
Price per Adult: £10.00Price per Child (5 - 15yrs): £2.50
Ticket conditions
- A maximum of 5 passengers can travel on one e-ticket, if your party has more than 5 people then further e-tickets will be required to cover additional members. Further e-tickets must have at least one adult passenger.
- Passengers under 16 years of age must be accompanied by an adult.
- The price of an e-ticket is calculated based on the number of passengers (£10.00 per adult and £2.50 per child).
- Each group of up to 5 passengers will receive one e-ticket. The e-ticket should be printed and carried with you on your journey.
- The passenger named on the e-ticket must produce the form of ID chosen (passport, driving licence, credit card or utility bill) whenever requested by railway staff. If you cannot produce this ID then the e-ticket is invalid and all passengers will be considered as travelling without a ticket.
- The party must travel together.
- Tickets can be purchased a minimum of two days, and a maximum of three months, in advance of the travel date.
- The South Coast Downlander is valid after 9:30 weekdays and at any time over the weekend and on bank holidays.
From £12.50 you can explore the South Downs and the Southern network for a day! Travel to and from any location in the South Downs area by train or by bus.
The All Network Downlander e-ticket enables you and up to 4 other people to have unlimited day access to all train services provided by Southern and the participating bus services in the South Downs.
Price per Child (5 - 15yrs): £2.50
The All Network Downlander e-ticket enables you and up to 4 other people to have unlimited day access to all train services provided by Southern and the participating bus services in the South Downs.
Cost of Tickets
Price per Adult: £12.50Price per Child (5 - 15yrs): £2.50
Ticket conditions
- A maximum of 5 passengers can travel on one e-ticket, if your party has more than 5 people then further e-tickets will be required to cover additional members. Further e-tickets must have at least one adult passenger.
- Passengers under 16 years of age must be accompanied by an adult.
- The price of an e-ticket is calculated based on the number of passengers (£12.50 per adult and £2.50 per child).
- Each group of up to 5 passengers will receive one e-ticket. The e-ticket should be printed and carried with you on your journey.
- The passenger named on the e-ticket must produce the form of ID chosen (passport, driving licence, credit card or utility bill) whenever requested by railway staff. If you cannot produce this ID then the e-ticket is invalid and all passengers will be considered as travelling without a ticket.
- The party must travel together.
- Tickets can be purchased a minimum of two days, and a maximum of three months, in advance of the travel date.
- All Network Downlander is valid after 10:00 weekdays and at any time over the weekend and on bank holidays.
2) Ongar: Hurrah for the newly-opened Epping Ongar steam railway [photos]So if you're ever in Ongar, and with the coming of the railway that is fractionally more likely, what could you do? You could get straight back on the train, if you're in a hurry or have zero sense of adventure. You could walk down the High Street to the first pub, which is the Cock Tavern, and lose yourself in real ale. Or you could walk a little longer round Ongar..
3) Hastings: I went for the Jerwood, but really enjoyed the rest of the resort too [photos]
alice neel
Rose Wylie: 'My mother thought women should have an escape route'
Painter Rose Wylie is finally being talked about as an up-and-coming artist – at 77
Rose Wylie at her home in Kent. Photograph: Henry Browne for the Guardian
On one side of the large shed that is tacked on to the back of Rose Wylie's cottage in a Kent village are two paintings of flowers – a carnation and a lily – bright but deliberately ugly, as a swipe against supermarket flowers. "They're grown in Africa," she says, "to be exported to big supermarkets in Europe and the people who live there don't have any ground left for them. They are hideous flowers, they have no smell, they're out of season, I hate them."
On the other side of the room is a large painting of a male ballet dancer in a proud leap across the canvas, with two ballerinas quietly watching him. It was inspired from a photograph Wylie saw in the paper. "It wasn't supposed to be a comment about male supremacy but it carries that message. [The ballerinas] watch, they're not taking part in the action – it's a feminist picture." So you are a traditional painter after all – you paint pictures of flowers and ballet dancers, I say. She hoots with laughter. There is a seriousness to her, when she is talking about her work – she glares from under her pewter-grey bob – but a sense of fun too.
Over the past two years, Wylie has finally been gaining recognition at the age of 77. The Jerwood gallery in Hastings will show the first retrospective of her work when it opens in March. Wylie is still selecting which paintings to show, but has completed a new work of people in bathing costumes to tie in with the south coast.
In 2010, Germaine Greer sang her praises in this newspaper, and she was selected as the British artist in the Women to Watch exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, which promotes underrepresented and promising female artists. Last year, she showed in New York, Miami, Berlin and London. She currently has an exhibition in Moscow.
How does she feel about getting more attention now? "It's a thrill I suppose. Rather peculiar." Still, it has solved her storage problems – so much of her work has now either been bought, or is held by her agent. "It's so nice to have people wanting to buy them and show them, but at the same time you get used to seeing them around and you don't like losing them. I'm not crazy about money. I don't buy stuff. I almost buy nothing, other than paint, canvas, wood and staples." She would like to have enough money to employ someone to help her stretch the canvases and cut the grass, she says, but that's about it.
Wylie grew up in Kent, and always wanted to be an artist. "My mother played the piano and was rather sorry she hadn't done it a bit more seriously. My father was a Victorian engineering type who finished up with an army job in India." It was "highly conventional", she says, but adds "my mother thought women should have an escape route from husbands and marriage, and that they should do something that allowed them that. She wanted me to be a barrister but I have a hard time remembering things. Painting is perfect because you don't have to remember a blind thing."
She went to the Folkestone and Dover College of Art (much later she did an MA at the Royal College of Art), where she was told that women couldn't become great artists. "[Being an artist] was considered a stupid idea, women were just there for a bit of culture, like a finishing school, something to do until they got married. All the teachers were men, there were no women." She pauses. In a way they were right, she says, "because I got married very soon and had children".
Wylie met her husband Roy Oxlade, also an artist, and they married when she was 21; the first of their three children came a year later. She took teaching jobs, but "Roy was a senior lecturer and I was a lecturer and we depended more on his salary than mine, and that was that," she says. "We decided it was not a good idea for two parents to paint, because painting is very isolating and you do tend to focus on yourself and children then become an irritation. I don't think it works, and I think the bringing up of children is hugely important. So I brought up the children and I think that was a good idea."
She started painting again after about 20 years. Did she feel she had much catching up to do? "In a funny kind of way I thought it was good to start again," she says. "Often people who don't know about me but see my work assume I am much younger – 26 or something. So in a certain way, I don't paint [for my age]. One dealer said to me 'anyone who puts you into the art fairs is very brave because it's about youth'. You have to be a young person. [The art world] is absolutely obsessed with youth, which is a shame because once you've had early acceptance it is difficult to maintain it. You become a product. I think that's when depression settles in. If you've never had it, you've got nothing to lose."
She likes to paint footballers and film stars, she says, "because everybody sees them, they are accessible, they are shared. It's a contemporary bonding. We all know them, and then you can see what the artist has done with them." Which, in her case, is to break them down – drawing them over and over until it is her expression of the person that comes to the fore, rather than a straight representationGetting older means getting down on to the floor to paint is harder than it used to be, but other than that Wylie says she doesn't mind ageing. "I think in many ways it's better," she says. "You can be completely yourself. With the children grown up and gone, that makes you a free person."
• A retrospective of Rose Wylie will be at the Jerwood gallery hastings from 17 March. "Rosemount", her current solo show is at Regina Gallery, Moscow, 2 February to 10 March.
• This article was amended on 14 February 2012. The original said that Rose Wylie will hold an exhibition in Moscow next year. This has been corrected and the information added to the footnote.
4) Spaghetti Junction: An unexpected world of canals and towpaths lurks beneath the concrete pillarsOn the other side of the room is a large painting of a male ballet dancer in a proud leap across the canvas, with two ballerinas quietly watching him. It was inspired from a photograph Wylie saw in the paper. "It wasn't supposed to be a comment about male supremacy but it carries that message. [The ballerinas] watch, they're not taking part in the action – it's a feminist picture." So you are a traditional painter after all – you paint pictures of flowers and ballet dancers, I say. She hoots with laughter. There is a seriousness to her, when she is talking about her work – she glares from under her pewter-grey bob – but a sense of fun too.
Over the past two years, Wylie has finally been gaining recognition at the age of 77. The Jerwood gallery in Hastings will show the first retrospective of her work when it opens in March. Wylie is still selecting which paintings to show, but has completed a new work of people in bathing costumes to tie in with the south coast.
In 2010, Germaine Greer sang her praises in this newspaper, and she was selected as the British artist in the Women to Watch exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, which promotes underrepresented and promising female artists. Last year, she showed in New York, Miami, Berlin and London. She currently has an exhibition in Moscow.
How does she feel about getting more attention now? "It's a thrill I suppose. Rather peculiar." Still, it has solved her storage problems – so much of her work has now either been bought, or is held by her agent. "It's so nice to have people wanting to buy them and show them, but at the same time you get used to seeing them around and you don't like losing them. I'm not crazy about money. I don't buy stuff. I almost buy nothing, other than paint, canvas, wood and staples." She would like to have enough money to employ someone to help her stretch the canvases and cut the grass, she says, but that's about it.
Wylie grew up in Kent, and always wanted to be an artist. "My mother played the piano and was rather sorry she hadn't done it a bit more seriously. My father was a Victorian engineering type who finished up with an army job in India." It was "highly conventional", she says, but adds "my mother thought women should have an escape route from husbands and marriage, and that they should do something that allowed them that. She wanted me to be a barrister but I have a hard time remembering things. Painting is perfect because you don't have to remember a blind thing."
She went to the Folkestone and Dover College of Art (much later she did an MA at the Royal College of Art), where she was told that women couldn't become great artists. "[Being an artist] was considered a stupid idea, women were just there for a bit of culture, like a finishing school, something to do until they got married. All the teachers were men, there were no women." She pauses. In a way they were right, she says, "because I got married very soon and had children".
Wylie met her husband Roy Oxlade, also an artist, and they married when she was 21; the first of their three children came a year later. She took teaching jobs, but "Roy was a senior lecturer and I was a lecturer and we depended more on his salary than mine, and that was that," she says. "We decided it was not a good idea for two parents to paint, because painting is very isolating and you do tend to focus on yourself and children then become an irritation. I don't think it works, and I think the bringing up of children is hugely important. So I brought up the children and I think that was a good idea."
She started painting again after about 20 years. Did she feel she had much catching up to do? "In a funny kind of way I thought it was good to start again," she says. "Often people who don't know about me but see my work assume I am much younger – 26 or something. So in a certain way, I don't paint [for my age]. One dealer said to me 'anyone who puts you into the art fairs is very brave because it's about youth'. You have to be a young person. [The art world] is absolutely obsessed with youth, which is a shame because once you've had early acceptance it is difficult to maintain it. You become a product. I think that's when depression settles in. If you've never had it, you've got nothing to lose."
She likes to paint footballers and film stars, she says, "because everybody sees them, they are accessible, they are shared. It's a contemporary bonding. We all know them, and then you can see what the artist has done with them." Which, in her case, is to break them down – drawing them over and over until it is her expression of the person that comes to the fore, rather than a straight representationGetting older means getting down on to the floor to paint is harder than it used to be, but other than that Wylie says she doesn't mind ageing. "I think in many ways it's better," she says. "You can be completely yourself. With the children grown up and gone, that makes you a free person."
• A retrospective of Rose Wylie will be at the Jerwood gallery hastings from 17 March. "Rosemount", her current solo show is at Regina Gallery, Moscow, 2 February to 10 March.
• This article was amended on 14 February 2012. The original said that Rose Wylie will hold an exhibition in Moscow next year. This has been corrected and the information added to the footnote.
5) Tilbury Centenary Day: Celebrations at the cruise terminal, a look inside the old station and a busride round the docks - ace.
6) The Croxley Curve: Despite growing up less than a mile away, I'd never seen trains on this Metropolitan spur before
7) Devil's Dyke: A gorgeous (if windswept) walk along the South Downs to Ditchling Beacon [photos]
8) East Grinstead: Exploring the Sussex commuter town, the former home of Dr Beeching.
9) The Labworth: Lunch at this Art Deco Canvey Island caff was unexpectedly wonderful.
10) Portsmouth: A visit to Charles Dickens' birthplace [part of Dickens bicentenary week]
Runners up: Brighton Pavilion, Gosport, Windsor to Staines, Harry Potter Studios, Sudbury, Long Melford, Fairhaven, Ramsgate, Ebury Way, Ely, Galton Bridge, Shireoaks to Worksop, Cromer.
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