For those of you new to Wanderlust Women – I started the “Time Travel” feature awhile back for revisiting the places I have enjoyed traveling to over the years. Today’s travel memory journeys back to the Victorian seaside resort of Boscombe, England.

The stars shine brightly on Boscombe. A lone ship dots the horizon, making it difficult to tell where the stars and the English Channel become one.

View from the Chine Hotel

I sit here at the lovely Chine Hotel and listen to the gentle lull of the waves as they lap against the old pier. This place is peaceful. This place has a settled, contented spirit. There is no tragic romance in Boscombe’s past as in Brighton, nor a forced sense of Austen history as occasioned in Bath.  No, Boscombe is the idyllic seashore retreat that it offers itself to be. . . as it always has done! Oh, to have lived here when the mineral springs surged through this cliffside resort.

Even the old pier is contented as it sits at the bottom of the chine (by the way, a chine is a craggy cliff, in case you were wondering.). Its gated facade says “Unsafe” but its long dock opens up to welcome all visitors – mothers and daughters in search of solutions; solo travelers in search of peace; elderly couples taking a sunset stroll hand in hand; a single man wrestling with his inner spirit. A solitary traveler in need of rest, yet searching for dreams in the sands under her unsteady feet, is at peace in Boscombe. I keep reaching. Someone will grab on sooner or later and join me for this wonderful ride. – March 1998

Find your hotel in Boscombe now!