I would hate to tell you how long it's been since I was last in Bray. I can say that I'll never willingly return. It was a cloudy cold 15 degree day despite it being summer and July. More like winter lite. Parking was difficult as the sea front place was packed with vehicles and like many places now ya must pay to park on a road that people are already paying road tax for and parking is limited to three hours - not that I could stay three hours, but serious walkers could put in over three hours easily. We began to walk up Bray head towards a Christian cross. It was certainly a pretty view across the bay and town to the Dublin mountains and the train silently gliding along the coast into the town made it all the more so. We were making good progress walking up the hills and felt rain on the wind so not wanting to risk a soaking we turned back down hill and as is typical there was no more rain, thankfully. We then walked from one end of the town to the other in search of toilets and coffee. As we ambled a few things struck me. First was the awful smell of over used cooking fat in the air from a few run down fish and chip shops and it was a nasty stench, yet a takeaway fish and chip was a stonking 13 euro (say £11.50) and many places didn't say which fish was being sold. Sorry guys you are having a real laugh. If it was a giant beer battered fresh cod, cooked in groundnut oil with proper chips, proper mushy peas, bread, real butter and a pot of tea then it would be worth buying but the portions I saw people paying an extortionate sum would cost a fiver in my home town and that's for cod. I also witnessed one shop tipping frozen chicken nuggets into the stinking hot fat. No thanks. Second was just how dingy and run down many sea front places looked. Seedy would be too strong but there's little attractive where we walked on the other side from the promenade where the shops and bed & breakfast places were. The promenade side was pretty though. The beach area is 80% stone and the 'sand' was the type you could park a car on. So we arrived at the other side of town to this place and we noted the Sea Life centre just next door. So we went in there looking for toilets. I saw one. It was a disabled toilet and I saw two wheelchair clients already queued up to go in. Just at that moment the toilet door opened as a wheel chair user was exiting. The acrid stench of urine wafting toward me made me wretch. How dare the Sea Life management treat customers in this filthy way; what does it take to clean a toilet? I'm assuming that there are managers but I wouldn't be surprised if there were none. The idle staff were talking to each other. Mind you the stink removed the stench of over used cooking oil, so every cloud! The last time I experienced toilets this nasty was in the Sinai peninsula, Egypt miles from fresh water, in a third world country. I left quicker than I went in and into this coffee place. The place was clean, cosy and the coffees were among the best I've had in a while. The Flat white and a tall cappuccino was €5.40. They served hot foods including soup and toasted panini, sausage rolls, as well as wraps, salads and sandwiches. The servers were mega friendly, the tables were cleared and cleaned quickly and efficient, serving our order pretty fast. We sat in comfortable armchairs and watched life go by as we promised ourselves never to return. We used their very clean toilets. The coffee guys say they roast their coffee in Co Wicklow: all I can say is it's darn good coffee. We were glad we visited Bray once more though but never again. read more