It is mid-afternoon on the south coast. For the first time, the brooding clouds that have covered the south coast have dispersed and the sun has broken through, glinting on the ear stud of the strapping young pace bowler striding up the hill from the sea end.
When you head for Sussex and the South Downs for a weekend, you don’t expect to find a small hotel that ticks all the boxes.
Mike Yardy, the Sussex and former England all-rounder, is to retire at the end of the season.
Think Tony Greig, think Kerry Packer. The two names are indelibly linked. Yet there is another link in this chain that can easily be forgotten.
Bowlers may have been fattening their averages in the opening weeks of the season but they do not tend to dominate too often at Hove whatever the weather.
I am reliably informed that this small hotel used to be called The Place.