West Sussex Coast - A Cycling Perambulation

So far 2022 has been shaping up no better than 2020 or 2021, with the TV news increasing your likelihood of driving to the nearest cliff and depressing the accelerator with every bulletin. If it's not narcissistic tyrants making a last-ditch attempt to make a name for themselves using mass brutality it's a constant drip-feed of price rises pushing people into the kind of poverty that just shouldn't exist if the world's sixth biggest economy operated with a modicum of empathy.

As always, sunshine and nature are there to provide a free panacea for all this angst, and I undertook my first cycling trip away during Easter of this year. My very first public article dates from 1994 and it documents a cycling trip through Sussex to raise money for our local Venture Scout unit, of which I was a member at the time. I saw the friend that I went with on TV news discussing COVID research a while back, so he's obviously done well. As for me, I decided to retread some old ground, and it was interesting to revisit some of those places after almost 28 years have passed. - 28 years!? That's insane!

I headed for Brighton with my bike and rucksack on a train that was packed as far as the tourist Mecca of Rye. After that i could breathe freely. Upon alighting, I cruised down to the coast and followed the sea wall cycle path to Hove and the road to Shoreham-by-Sea, which is the longest road in the UK beginning with a two, specifically the A259.

My comments were quite negative about Shoreham in that 1994 article, possibly due to the abundance of industry to the east of the town, but I can confirm that the town is actually very pleasant, with a bustling riverside town centre and a quaint churchyard nestling just behind it in a way not to dissimilar to the parish church in my home town of Ashford. I rode over the footbridge across the River Adur and then followed the cycle path along the coast, which was initially separated from the 'mainland' by a lagoon.

I described Worthing as having a 'green beach' in 1994, but I can confirm that the colour scheme is quite normal in 2022. The tall building by the promenade at the centre of the town reminded me of the similar building that you can't miss around fifty miles up the coast in St Leonards. It seems that planners seem to have a compulsion to put one of these 'iconic landmarks' in every large seaside town. As I continued westward the roads took me away from the seafront for a while, and more surprising than the tall concrete finger pointing into the sky was spotting the odd thatch-roofed cottage as I rode through the suburbs of these Sussex conurbations, a remnant of days before the towns swallowed up the surrounding countryside no doubt.

I got stopped at a level crossing near Angmering and I was surprised at some of the 'big name' shops in little old Rustington. I then picked up the sea wall for some more (respectful) pedestrian-dodging, heading into Littlehampton, another pleasant town where a river meets the Sussex coast, this time the Arun. A very basic white lighthouse overlooks the sea, which I had of course visited with my father in researching our lighthouse visiting tome, 'England and Wales in a Flash.' I was surprised to find a Wetherspoons pub in Littlehampton so I popped in for the obligatory curry before heading inland to Arundel and using a gravel trail which climbed into woods, where I found a spot to set up camp. The birdsong died down and the moon was bright. It was chilly as the night went on, confirming my long-established view that an early morning low of seven degrees is the very coldest temperature that I will camp in.

It was now Easter Sunday and I saw a deer as I continued westward along the trail, which soon turned south and descended to cross the A27 dual carriageway. I headed back to the coast via pleasant villages and suburbs, eventually resuming a westward course along the sea wall. I'd never been to Bognor Regis before, and the extent of my knowledge was that it is one of around a dozen places in England with the suffix 'regis' indicating 'royal patronage' and that it has long been reputed that George the Fifth's final word was 'Bognor.' The penultimate word was a taboo verb! However, this is something of an urban myth as his final words were in fact the equally pleasant statement of 'God damn you' spoken to a nurse.

I intended to use an independent café for breakfast but Wetherpoons was just too convenient again. I was surprised to see holiday-makers drinking pints of beer at 9am, and in spite of this Bognor was surprisingly quiet. I concluded that those who do their drinking at the other end of the day were not yet out of bed. Continuing westward on lanes, I found that the scenery became flat and very rural, a bit like our local 'Romney Marsh' in Kent. After heading southward down a lengthy dead end by mistake I lost the will to ride to Selsey, so I picked up the path beside Chichester Canal at Hunston, following it all the way to the marina at the end and then all the way back into Chichester, the county town of West Sussex. At 3.8 miles long, the canal is not exactly epic, but it's very pleasant nonetheless.

Oddly, this was my fifth trip to Chichester by bike but the first time I'd properly explored the city, which reminds me of a quiet version of Canterbury. The most striking features in the cathedral (pictured) for me were the Roman mosaic which is at the height of the original ground, so you gaze down upon it through a glass window in the floor, and a 'tomb for two' depicting a ancient couple holding hands which seemed romantic in a tragic way. I also did the 'wall walk' around the city which was almost as impressive at Chester's city wall, with a view of the priory and a motte-and-bailey castle mound, both in a large playing field. I then headed for the Chichester Inn and sat in the courtyard at the back for my first outdoor pint of 2022. Well, it was a bit more than a pint to be honest.

My next plan of action was to follow the old Roman road of Stane Street up onto the South Downs. There is something satisfying about following a dead-straight ancient course which is sometimes A-road, sometimes lane, sometimes bridleway and sometimes footpath. After a long climb through woods I turned around to enjoy the view, with the hills on the Isle of Wight in the distance. I found a spot to camp behind some gorse bushes and there was a nice sunset. The night was unusually silent for wild camping and the morning was again cold, so I packed up and began my ride back to Brighton at 6am.

I had a wander around the striking Catholic cathedral on the hill at Arundel, I found Angmering to be a very quaint village in spite of its suburban location, and I enjoyed a fine English breakfast with added mushrooms in an independent café (hurrah!) in Worthing. The staff were taking the Mick out of a customer who had been on a disastrous date. I'm sure that made him feel wonderful! I followed the A270 into Brighton purely to have a nose at what journeys were like before the town was bypassed. As I passed beneath the plethora of railway lines I spotted some steps leading up to a siding that had been converted into a short walking route called the Brighton Greenway. I followed this to the station but I wasn't ready to go home yet, so I decided to ride to Lewes, the country town of East Sussex.

As you'd expect in a city with Britain's only Green Party MP, the cycle route beside the A270 out of Brighton was very good, but the pub I intended to spend lunch in at Falmer was not open on Mondays so I merely followed the route to Lewes and caught the first of three trains home. Falafel, homous and a can of Coke on Hastings Station was the somewhat modest finale to the mission. If you've enjoyed the write-up, you know where there's plenty more (Stair-Rods & Stars).

Thoughts on the Lyrics of Limerance

"I think love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America" 

- Frank Zappa

It will soon be February 14th. For a long time I used to refer to this as Singles Awareness Day, and I even wrote a song about the way that single people can feel overlooked or portrayed negatively, as though only one lifestyle is valued by Western society. You only have to turn on the TV to see adverts, programmes and films that all tap into the 'one size fits all' philosophy. The reason for this is perhaps obvious in evolutionary terms. A lifestyle that generally results in the propagation of human population is going to be seen as 'desirable,' although with the number of humans increasing exponentially out of pace with resources on a finite planet, it may be time for society to enter a new paradigm.

Then I had a period where February 14th didn't really bother me at all. My girlfriend (who later became my wife) and I exchanged cards but we weren't always together on this particular day. We had plenty of chances to catch up all year round after all. That said, it was always nice to go out for a meal, although we didn't actually need an excuse to do this.

Now, things have changed again and my thoughts on the 45th day of each year are perhaps different once more. I now think of this as the Festival of Limerence, because if you think about it, it's not really for couples who are already together and secure, but more about declaring interest in the early days of uncertainty - cards signed with a question mark and all that mystery and intrigue. I feel that I should apologise at this point for one incident around thirty years ago when I was at school where I was embarrassed to receive a card from a girl I wasn't attracted to, tearing the card up, which in hindsight was horrible, but as a young teenager who had yet to experience such emotions I guess I had yet to fully develop skills of empathy. It was poetic justice that I didn't receive a card from anybody for many years after this!

It recently struck me that much of what society thinks of as romance is really 'limerence,' a term coined by Dorothy Tennov in 1979 who postulated the kind of intense romantic infatuation that is often considered 'romantic' is a very different beast to familial love and other uses of the other L-word.

Let's look at some love songs that might just be limerence songs.

The first ditty that springs to mind is Robert Palmer's 1986 hit, 'Addicted to Love,' which pretty much compares the romantic experience to that of drug use; 'Your mind is not your own.' One of my favourite songwriters is Bob Dylan and albums such as 'Time out of Mind' (1997) are littered with expressions of unconsummated frustration. He sings about being 'sick of love' and 'in the thick of it,' and exclaims 'You have no idea what you do to me' and [it feels] 'like the universe has swallowed me whole.' If you rewind to the 1976 track 'Isis,' he sings 'What drives me to you is what drives me insane.'

Leonard Cohen was another master of seemingly limerent lyrics, in songs like 'There Ain't No Cure For Love' (1988), once again equating the experience with that of being ill, and in the 1971 song 'Avalanche' he sings 'I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul.'

Often lyrics simply glory in the sheer misery of it, as though there is some apparent virtue in feeling like a sack of effluent! However, one song that really doesn't glorify the feeling is Barry Ryan's 1968 classic 'Eloise,' with lyrics like 'And only time will tell, and take away this lonely hell.' Then there's the Temptations' 1971 hit 'Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me),' which leads the listener to believe that the vocalist is blissfully happy before declaring that it's all just fantasy. Another song that smacks of limerence is John Lennon's 'Abbey Road' composition for the Beatles, 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' where he repeats the line 'I want you so bad, it's driving me mad' throughout the song and the band attempts to represent the heaviness of the feeling musically with the endlessly circling coda.

Taking all of this to its logical conclusion, could we infer that a greater percentage of creative and artistic people experience limerence, rather than the ordinary more controlled form of romantic feelings? Or to turn it around, is it this profoundly unpleasant and obsessive experience that prompts the person to release some of the tension creatively?

Food for thought. So what actually is it?

The fascinating book 'Living with Limerence' by the mysteriously named 'Doctor L,' postulates that three factors must be present for limerence to occur. These are an initial sign of hope followed by sufficient ongoing fuel for this hope to survive and a level of uncertainty. I am of the opinion that much of our romantic fiction is entirely based around this concept. It's not a love story if a couple merely meet, start dating, mutually agree upon a relationship and end up getting married (or whatever substitutes as the ultimate fulfilment in modern societies). There has to be a certain level of impossibility. For example, one or both partners could be in another relationship, or there could be geographical or socio-economic barriers ('Romeo and Juliet,' anyone?). If the limerence is expressed and the result is positive it could be passed off as romantic comedy, with all the frustrations seeming comedic in the light of the happy ending. If the limerence does not produce the desired effect the story will be more tragic, as well as being the source for a million love songs (Barry Manilow / Take That pun intended).

The point about uncertainty is particularly interesting. Professor Robert Sapolsky in one of his many fascinating YouTube lectures demonstrates how a perceived 50% chance of an action resulting in success produces the maximum amount of dopamine in anticipation of the desired result. Both a 25% chance and a 75% chance result in less dopamine. I would postulate that with relationships the brain views the 'yes / no' nature of a potential partner as a 50/50 chance even if it is not. Thus, the dopamine goes through the roof and one can be stuck in a state of limerence.

It is also postulated that the experience is a kind of sticking plaster over deeper issues, such as lack of fulfilment, being the brain's way of creating its own excitement when things are not quite right at a more profound level. For example, it is commonly assumed that John Lennon's extreme emotions for Yoko Ono were a result of losing his mother at a young age.

Returning to art and literature, it does seem that a huge proportion of such creativity stems from this experience that the majority will fortunately never have, in spite of idealising its themes. I guess it is some consolation to turn such unpleasantness into something that is, on the whole, appreciated. Take the novel 'Love in the Time of Cholera' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez for example, where a man simply pines away his whole life for a woman who he eventually pairs up with in old age. In truth, that's not romantic, that's just disturbing, and thankfully our brains agree. Generally periods of limerence have a shelf-life that can be measured in months and at most a few years. And the more generally experienced non-limerent form of passion is not so different either in its lack of longevity. And this is down to our old friend, evolution.

If a couple could be completely obsessed with one another for life, you can see how any potential children might be neglected. The parents would be too wrapped up in one another to fully concentrate on the needs of the child. However, literature and films rarely depict the period after the wedding when passions die down, but die down they must, because that's how it was for our ancestors. In other words, the children that survived had the parents that cooled off after the usual time it takes to produce offspring, and thus these traits were passed on.

Returning to limerence, it is perhaps a perfect example of something called ambiguous grief. When a person dies, the death is final and once grief has been experienced those left behind can recover, but a limerent has to deal with an ambiguity where they can both imagine a life alone and a life where the potential partner becomes an actual partner. And one thing human brains can't stand is duality. And with all that dopamine sloshing around (among other hormonal changes), it is a chemical addiction just like heroin or cigarettes! It seems that Robert Palmer wasn't so far off the mark after all.

[Adam Colton is the author of numerous psychological fiction books as well as '2021: A Musical Odyssey,' which reviews classic rock albums.]