The i360 Watchtower

Brighton is never a city to sit on its laurels or its backside. The electric railway of Magnus Volk, still running from the pier to the Marina, is the oldest such railway in the world; it is the only coastal city with its own Palace the  Royal Pavilion. It has the quaint Lanes full of antiques shops and restaurants and the bohemian North Lane area like Portobello Road. The gay pride weekend of revelry attracted 300,000 visitors on top of the 9m that come every year and now it has the slenderest, tallest watchtower in the UK. Brighton makes the most of its picturesque setting between the Downs and the sea and the watchtower offers the views to appreciate this. At a cost of over £40m I was not alone in wondering whether money would not be better spent on a hospital. The area on the sea front West Street and the start of Hove, the Hope statue, has become run down in recent years and part of the aim of the i360 is to regenerate this. It’s also facing the West Pier, the oldest pier in Britain now falling in the sea. There is a West Pier preservation society to satisfy and the aspiration is that a vertical tower will be a kind of 21st century pier. The original toll booth of the West Pier has been restored. The vertical column is 426 feet high and the architects of the project are David Marks and Julia Barfield who designed the London Eye. As with that popular attraction the sponsors are British Airways.

You cannot criticise these projects without first sampling them so yesterday at 17.00 I did so with a friend a visitor from Liverpool.  We were rewarded withe the hottest and clearest day of the year. They still need to work out the logistics. We queued with our ticket for some 20 minutes. It was blisteringly hot and a trolley service of drinks would made money for the owners and brought comfort to the visitors. Eventually we were ushered past security to the waiting area where we had our photo taken. We waited another 15 minutes there before the circular platform pod descended and we entered it. It can house 200 people comfortably with excellent vision lines. We took up a point looking out to sea but it’s best to circulate and appreciate the views of the Downs, east to the Marina and the cliffs of Rottingdean and west over Hove to Shoreham and Worthing. To use a cliche the views were breathtaking. We would have appreciated a commentary. Why not use a famous local resident like Des Lynam to give a potted history of Brighton and the famous people who lived or visited? In the Theatre alone there were Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, Anna Neagle and Terence Rattigan, comedians Max Miller, Norman Wisdom and now Steve Coogan. Winston Churchill used to bathe here. Even today David Walliams, Fat Boy Slim and Zoe Ball, Adele and Nick Berry live in homes in a private enclave on the beach.

For the thirsty there was bar serving bubbles and gin and tonics not at cheap prices at £18.50 for 2 glasses of them but a welcome stimulant to the views unfolding before our very eyes. The journey time is 15 minutes to ascend and same to descend. I would have preferred more time. After we exited the platform we were in the inevitable  shop and went to collect our photograph. This was inserted into a brochure containing  a history of Brighton and cleverly using our picture in a Victorian setting. Again not cheap at £21 but a lovely memento all the same.

All in all a experience I would wholeheartedly recommend .