The pictures in this post were taken in early 2011. A bit cold, a bit damp, but you should get a feel for the place from them as very little will have changed.

The Chesapeake Mill is the main antiques shop in Wickham and it’s very easily spotted on account of its timber frame and abundance of all signs on the exterior, particularly vintage dog food signs. The mill itself has an interesting architectural history in that those wooden beams came from the heavy frigate USS Chesapeake which had fought the British in the War of 1812 then been captured, pressed into service for the British, and ultimately broken up.

All this to say that here then are some photos of the street art around Hilsea Lido on an overcast day in March.

While it may not be the greatest example of artwork featured, we were nevertheless very pleased to see a cruise ship represented. Did you know that we like cruises? We hardly ever mention it.

While there were some lovely pieces by lots of well-known artists there to enjoy, the piece that most people visited for was the collaborative work between local legends My Dog Sighs and Fark.

As mentioned, we have friends who live in Basingstoke and 2023 marked a milestone birthday for one of them so a group of us descended upon the northern Hampshire town to head out for a meal. My wife and I had actually come up the night before and taken a walk through Basingstoke, found a fabulous little gaming pub/café, then looked around Milestones Museum near our hotel in the morning before popping along to Oakley Hall, but that’s for another post.

We arrived early enough at the hotel to amble up the path from the road to its entrance and this gave me a chance to take some photos. With it being February there was a cool dampness in the air and not a lot of greenery on the trees, but it all made for some pleasantly atmospheric views.

As you can see, Oakley Hall is fairly quiet and isolated in the countryside just outside Basingstoke. The existing building dates to the late eighteenth century, replacing other buildings in and around the area going back at least another five centuries prior. There’s a connection with another location we’ve visited in the past, this being The Vyne, as the current building was erected on the instructions of Wither Bramston (great name) after his marriage to Mary, one of the Chute family who owned the Vyne from the seventeenth century onwards.

Now, you might look at the photos below and think to yourself “I didn’t come here for a review of Oakley Hall to see pictures of moss or lichens!” and hopefully part of that is because you’ve forgotten that I’ve already explained that this isn’t a review. I also take photos, and I’m also on Mastodon, and this means I’m legally required to take photos of moss and lichens. It’s in the Mastodon charter. You can check that out for yourself.

We now reached the entrance to Oakley Hall and made our way inside to wait for the rest of our group to turn up where we enjoyed a quick drink first. Quick maybe, cheap no.

As for the meal, because there were a group of us we’d been told ahead of time we needed to make our choices, so that wasn’t ideal and somewhat puzzling for a restaurant. We’d much rather have perused the menu on the day and chosen. This pre-choosing then led to some of the food feeling like it had been prepared well in advance in terms of texture and temperature. None of it was bad, but none of it was really good either. Our Basingstoke friends who’d arranged this and who’d dined there before were perfectly happy with it all and that’s largely all that matters for the occasion but in private chats with others of us who’d attended we all came away from it feeling that it was average at absolute best. One of the reasons I don’t tend to write reviews, though, is that expectations, likes, and experiences differ from person to person the world over so they can tend towards the pointlessness.

Anyway, to the day afterwards where we decided to take a bit of a look around nearby Greenwich before catching the tube to the train station and heading home.

We made our way to the National Maritime Museum, and from there we took a look around the Cutty Sark which had not long been reopened following restoration work after a fire in 2007. I’d only brought my 100mm macro lens with me (I’d not taken the camera to the gig) so the photos I ended up taking around the nineteenth century clipper ended up being a little bit odd and arguably artsy. Historical Ship Ropes: A Collection.

An odd surprise when visiting the Cutty Sark was finding the Long John Silver Figurehead Collection housed beneath the vessel. A collector of maritime objects, Sydney Cumbers lost an eye as a child and took to wearing an eyepatch that gave rise to his nickname. The 101 figureheads in his collection were donated to the Cutty Sark trust in 1953 after she became a museum ship open to the public.

From the Cutty Sark we walked under the Thames through the 370 metres-long Greenwich Foot Tunnel, opened in 1902, with distinctive entrances beneath glass-domed buildings. It was here that we were treated to another surprising sight in the form of a ballerina posing for a photo-shoot.

A few random photos from the financial district to finish off.

Greenwich is definitely one of the more interesting areas of London and we really ought to return at some point to do it more justice, particularly around the park area to the south of the museum.

In September 2012 we had a birthday thing to attend in Horsham in the evening so we made the decision to make a day of it and pay another visit to Brighton first. The weather was lovely for it.

We started off with a bimble up and down The Lanes. It was here, a half dozen years earlier, that my wife had spotted an emerald ring in a jewellers that she really liked the look of, and with it being somewhat more than we’d normally spend on something like that this had led to us deciding to get married so as to pretend it was an engagement ring. Had we not visited The Lanes we may not have been married today, and we may not have discovered our love of cruising (at least for a while) because our honeymoon ended up being our very first cruise: Diamond Princess, Asia.

From The Lanes we headed down and along the pier. It’s Brighton Palace Pier to be precise, not to be confused with the West Pier, although you’d have a hard time walking along that one following the storms and fires that have destroyed most of it. Brighton Palace Pier was built in 1899 and was the third pier to be built along Brighton’s seafront. These days it hosts a decent amusement park at its end, is very popular with humans and seagulls alike, and makes for a lovely walk if you find yourself drawn to being near the sea as much as we do.

At the time of our visit the Brighton Wheel stood on the seafront. This was dismantled and removed in 2016 to allow the new Brighton i360 tower to take over the reins of “big thing on the beach that gives visitors a lovely view.”

Did you know that deer like to eat clothing? Well we didn’t know that but there was a gated section within the wildlife park where you could walk amongst the deer and I still have fond memories of laughing along with numerous other visitors there at the time who found ourselves the sources of nibbled hoodies and jeans and undone shoelaces.

The cathedral was built over a long span of time and it was possible to see the transitional changes from Norman architecture (the square towers, for example) to Gothic (those windows and arches) both from outside and inside. Its foundations lay over what had previously been a Roman fortification.

For us it would be the many statues and reliefs in Exeter Cathedral that stood out as there were a great many that seemed to incorporate quite odd and often amusing depictions. Take the two exterior pieces below, for instance, that I’ve decided to name Knight Interrupted On The Toilet and Jimmy Hill, Chinny Reckon.

As I write this article (over a decade after the visit to this part of Devon, because I don’t like to rush things) it’s interesting to see the flags mounted on staffs in the photo below and consider the swathe of English flags that have been erected on lamp posts all across the country right now. There’s such a distinction between solemn honouring, respect, and pride in a place of worship, and banal and rampant racism that we see now. Some of the current crop of flagshaggers will say it’s patriotic but they’re only persuading similarly mentally-defective incels like themselves with this laughably imbecilic narrative, and the erections they get when their mindless vandalism and successful attempts to turn cities into tatty, messy eyesores gets press coverage are only discernible under microscopes.

Exeter Cathedral has a stone, vaulted ceiling, and not only is it a gorgeous example of one it’s also the longest, uninterrupted, medieval, stone, vaulted ceiling in the world.

Often when we visit churches on our travels we’ll gloss over a lot of the items mounted on walls, on plaques, etc. simply because they might be religious but they’re all much of a muchness and with very little variation in their respective histories. Exeter Cathedral stood out for grabbing our attention far more. Below you can see a sledge flag that the explorer Robert Falcon Scott took with him on one of his expeditions to the south pole. There’s also a giant version of one of those disappearing ball in a cup magic tricks (I’m guessing) which likely astounded medieval religious folk.

The Minstrels Gallery is a unique feature within English cathedrals with a front piece featuring twelve carved and painted angels playing musical instruments. Meanwhile, the representation of Queen Victoria and other members of the Royal Family to the funeral of Victoria Cross-recipient Howard Craufurd Elphinstone is worthy of a plaque to commemorate the occasion. Elphinstone had come out of the Crimean War not only with that cross but also honours from the French and Ottoman empires and had subsequently been appointed governor to princes Arthur and Leopold in the Royal Household.

Forget the upper minute hand section for the moment and look at this beautiful astronomical clock in Exeter Cathedral below, thought to date from the late fifteenth century. The outer circle marker indicates the hour of the day in a double-Roman numerals, 24-hour clock format while the inner circle shows the day of the month. The marker inside that is spherical and rotates to show the phase of the moon. The upper section with the minute hand was an eighteenth century addition and the original clock mechanism was replaced in the nineteenth century with further restorative works taking place in 1910.

Looks like someone doesn’t like the look of that crown of thorns suspended up there.

Scrawling graffiti on things seems to have always been with us and it was interesting to see how much there was on some sculpted works in the cathedral, as well as the dates.

The memorial below was an absolute delight, being that of Dorothy Dodderidge who died in 1614 (or 1617; there are reports of both, although the former date is definitely on the plaque above only my Latin isn’t good enough to translate it all). I love the pose, laying on one side, dressed in full Elizabethan finery, cradling a skull on a cushion. As you do.

The organ below shows it just after major renovation work in 2014. The first organ in Exeter Cathedral was built in 1665 but it has undergone a couple of considerable rebuilds since then.

Nutcombe Quicke was the original name of the reverend named below, the son of John and Rebecca Quicke, related to the well-connected and reasonably wealthy Nutcombe family in Devon, for whom he was named. At the age of 65, however, an inheritance came up for which he needed to change his surname if he wanted to receive it (like Brewster’s Millions, but sillier) so through a private act of Parliament this was undertaken and he and the rest of his family took on the Nutcombe surname too.

The Lancers Memorial was sculpted in 1860 by Carlo Marochetti, commemorating those of the 9th Queens Royal Lancers who died during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Finally, two more interesting pieces of relief work that I’ve decided to name Mermaid! Mermaid!? I’m A Merman! and Tim, Don’t Move, There’s A Bee On Your Neck But I’ll Take Care Of It, Mate.

Exeter Cathedral held a lot more interest in it than most others we’ve visited over the years.

Car registration number plate dumping was all the rage in 2011. Everyone was doing it.

The building that looks a little like the upper part of a modern destroyer is part of what’s now known as the Portsdown Technology Park, but for those of us who’ve lived all our lives in Portsmouth it will always be ASWE. That stands for Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment and we all just assume that horrifying experiments took place there and may still do. That’s what watching too much sci-fi will do to you.

A concluding photograph looking down on the great, historic city of Portsmouth as we arrived back at our car. As is mandatory for anyone at any high point near where they live I must now state that I can see my house from up here.

For more views from near this vantage point there are also some pictures taken from Fort Purbrook.

Back in 2013 we headed to this spot on the west coast of England to use it as a base for exploring the surrounding area. A seaside location that we could come back to at the end of each day and enjoy some sea air walks, perhaps some tacky pier-end entertainments, and a pub or two absolutely suited the way we liked to have breaks.

We booked into the Beachlands Hotel at the time, it being close enough to walk into the main part of the town but not right in the middle of it, and having car parking too. The bonus was a swimming pool that we enjoyed using. One of our fondest memories of this hotel, though, was splashing out on an evening meal there one night and being seated outside the dining room ahead of our table being ready then being offered canapés. The canapés were thick slices of cucumber with a dollop of cream cheese on the top and they amused us immensely. We often talk about them now.

Anyway, after our drive up from Portsmouth and checking in, unpacking, and freshening up, we went for a walk down to Weston-super-Mare seafront and if it’s photographic evidence of this you’re after then you’ve come to the right place.

The beach at Weston-super-Mare has a lot of sand but depending on the time of day that you visit not much in the way of water. The bits that sort of look like water in the photos here are generally just wet sand reflecting the light from the sky. Weston-super-Mare actually has the second largest tidal range in the world with the difference between low and high tides over one and a half kilometres.

On a later visit to this part of the world in 2017 we would actually see the sea during another walk along Weston-super-Mare seafront.

The “Super Mare” part of the town’s name comes from Latin but it’s not “extraordinary lady horse” if that’s what you’re thinking while I’ve conveniently placed this paragraph just above photos of some equine animals on the beach. These are donkeys, silly, and while I’m not a fan of having working animals and would certainly never ride one they did seem to be looked after fairly well and were in decent spirits as far as my reading of donkey facial expressions go. “Super Mare” means “on the sea” and suggests that the town was named at high tide otherwise the commonly-used term of “Western-super-Mud” might have come into use a lot earlier instead.

We reached the Grand Pier and we felt compelled to walk down and around it. Should you ever need to slow us down if we’re pursuing you then you could do a lot worse than construct a few piers in our way and we’ll be sure to check them out.

The pavilion on the pier in the photo below is the third such one as it won’t surprise you to learn that since its original construction in 1904 there have been a few fires that have required substantial repairs. Our travelling experiences and visits to historical buildings suggest piers almost love catching fire as much as churches do.

We don’t talk about the kinky hot dog figure on Weston-super-Mare’s Grand Pier.

That brought our walk along the seafront at Weston-super-Mare to an end for this first night of our 2013 visit to the West Country. All that remained was to wander into town and find a pub or two to drink in. With this being pre-2016 there’s a good chance this would have been a Wetherspoons pub. We, like all good and decent people, don’t frequent their small-minded establishments any longer.

The Charles Dickens link, however, is very slight. Yes, he was born in the city in 1812, but three years later he and his family had moved away. I have no memory of my life at the age of three and I suspect Charles didn’t either and that the knowledge that he was a son of Pompey had no real influence on his life or writings.

So, if you should visit the Charles Dickens’ Birthplace Museum it’s worth remembering that this isn’t a place that he spent a lot of time in. That said, the work to turn this house into something very much of the style of the Regency period is worth a look, the room layouts will largely be accurate, and there are personal items associated with the Victorian author.

The museum isn’t large because the house isn’t large, broadly containing four rooms and a few items on displays on the staircase landings, but there’s a lovely sense of what it must have been like to live there especially with the general look and feel of the road outside and surrounding area.

One interesting aspect of the Charles Dickens’ Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth is that it also houses the couch on which he apparently died, a donation from his sister-in-law in 1909. The author’s life with the bookends of where he was born and where he died is rather poignant.