Leisure

“My university was going out in the real world” 22-year old travel content creator on building a platform, community and breaking taboos. Isaac Elam known online as Isaacexploress, grew up in Hastings but has found friends, freedom and a career documenting his travels to dangerous and unexpected places.

Nestled on the edge of Ore Village lies an unassuming building. It may look like an ordinary workshop from the outside, but inside, the Hastings & St Leonards Men’s Shed is quietly rewriting the narrative of ageing and loneliness in East Sussex. In this corner of Hastings something remarkable is being built – not just beautifully crafted birdboxes and clocks, but friendships, purpose, and hope.

Alexandra Park has been awarded the best tennis Park Venue of the Year and Hastings based Joe Adams has won Coach of the Year at the Lawn Tennis Association Awards. In light of these awards, Get Hastings chatted with Joe and Ross Cudmore, who coach from the park, to find out how they’re breaking the exclusivity of tennis and proving anyone can play.

It’s the motto imprinted on badges, flags and the forearms (I like to imagine) of soggy folk across the land. Emma proudly declared it as I joined her for coffee, along with the rest of the St Leonards Blue Tits… Blue Bells or Mermaids.

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m very much an advocate of gender equality: I’ve written children’s books about it, created animations and made t-shirts and I’m not shy to shout about my feminist agenda and how much inequality angers me. So when a member of the Get Hastings team suggested that we do a feature on Hastings United Girls Under 12s, I jumped at the chance.

In 2012, we decided to move to Hastings. Although I had never been, I had read and heard great things. It sounded right up my street and so we thought we’d give it a go. Before our move we had excitedly perused the internet, finding out as much as we could about what was going to be our new home and the thing that got me the most excited was not Pirate Day (although I was pretty chuffed about that), nor was it Jack in the Green. It was in fact Crazy Golf