Accidentally Steve: Every County in England - Part 6: Hampshire & Isle of Wight

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Every County in England - Part 6: Hampshire & Isle of Wight

Hampshire is a county I know well. Having lived & worked there for many years and spend childhood summers visiting my granddad there it’d not seem the most obvious place to want to spend a few nights when there were so many places unexplored. The reason I wasn’t just driving through lays a few miles off the coast. The Isle of Wight is England’s only island county and the couple of miles of sea that needed to be crossed to tick it off were creating a bottleneck in my journey. This stretch of water is the most expensive mile per mile ferry crossing in the world so reducing the costs and making the most of the trip was high priority. The city of Portsmouth seemed the most appealing place to base myself.

This gave me the chance to cross to the island via high speed hovercraft and also explore the city in Hampshire I was least familiar with.

Hampshire is a diverse county smack bang in the centre of the south coast. The landscape ranges from the tranquil woodlands & heath of the New Forest through rolling farmlands, magnificent cathedral cities and the more unsightly overspill towns built after the war to house Londoners made homeless by the blitz. The sheltered coastline makes an ideal location for two large port cities, Southampton & Portsmouth who hustle for pole position in this crowded county.

Hampshire houses the political powerhouses of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, the region taken up the present day counties I’ve already visited on this trip. Evidence of this period are very sparse in Portsmouth however. As with most south coast ports the city was heavily bombed during the war. This has given architects free reign to design a new city in their own style. Evidently until recently the style chosen was ‘grim’. Portsmouth is blighted by grey concrete developments thrown up with functionality rather than aesthetics in mind. Things have changed in recent years and the dockyards and many areas of the city have undergone regeneration. The towering landmark Spinnaker Tower now rises proudly over the Gunwharf Quays retail centre, built where a military base once stood. It brings in vast numbers of tourists who come to shop & visit a series of preserved vessels in the nearby docks.

I was keen to see the docks but felt less excited when I saw the prices. With parking topping £10 & a further £30 for tickets I plumped for a single attraction ticket, which randomly allows me to return as many times as I like for a year, but only to the one attraction.

I chose HMS Victory, Lord Nelson’s flagship at the battle of Trafalgar. The ship which dates to 1759 now sits in a dry dock and spends her days putting up with masses of tourists pacing her decks. When I arrived a group of 90 French school kids were just being ushered through, the guide kindly let me cut ahead. It seemed an interesting place to go for a school trip, “hey kids, this cannon was used to help us defeat you!” I guess the spot marked where Lord Nelson was shot by the French was to provide some solace for the children.

Leaving the ship I had to make my way another seagoing vessel, the hovercraft.

After securing a loan, mortgage and selling a kidney I managed to afford tickets and found myself speeding across to Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

The island is fairly small and compact but being January nearly everything aimed at tourists was shut. I settled for a wander around town. The town’s pier is the fourth longest & oldest in the country. It was built to allow ships to dock avoiding the long shallow sands of the beach. Today the pier is purely a functional affair with little to draw attention other than a regular train shuttling passengers to & from the catamaran. The beach was completely submerged by a high spring tide, with waves sloshing over the sea wall into a small park. Behind ran a long row of faded hotels. I took a walk into the town and discovered the locals had invented an exciting we game called ‘randomly stop in front of you.’ Essentially this involves stopping walking in the most inconvenient places, preferably with no warning. They were very proficient at this game. I took refuge in a greasy spoon cafe to watch the proceedings. The winner in my opinion was an elderly gentleman wearing a flat cap who skilfully halted in front of a mother pushing a twin stroller, she swerved into the road to avoid him, he followed and halted again causing her to nearly topple. Nonchalantly he then walked blindly across the street causing a bus to perform an emergency stop. 10/10 score for most oblivious chaos caused.

With so little open in town it was time to head back to the mainland and the journey onward to the east.