Photographing any dark attraction with flash restrictions always take me out of my comfort zone and into the world of high ISO photography but it’s doubly unnerving in an aquarium where things are moving, the light varies from second to second, and you’re trying to take pictures through glass that’s either distorted or filthy with fingerprints or both.

The sea turtles were very photogenic and moved slowly enough and in a light enough tank to get some reasonably sharp shots.

A semi-outdoors area housed some penguins and Inca terns. The ventilation wasn’t quite enough to take away the smell of fish that accompanies any gathering of penguins but you learn to live with it as they’re quite humorous to observe, occasionally pushing one another into the water or sliding into it on purpose but with zero grace.

My favourite area were the tanks holding moon jellies. I find them utterly mesmerising and stunningly beautiful to simply watch and photograph.

Something else you can often count on with our breaks is that if there’s an aquarium of some description nearby there will be a good chance that we’ll end up visiting it. I find the gentle movements of the fish, their colours, and the subdued lighting very relaxing and while it can be challenging in some instances to balance high ISO levels and low shutter speeds on the camera when photographing what’s going on I do like to at least try to get some decent pictures of the aquatic (and, often, reptilian) lifeforms on display.

The Great Yarmouth Sea Life Centre didn’t disappoint in providing for some relaxation and a pleasant indoors distraction during our few days in East Anglia.

My wife has always had a thing for penguins and Great Yarmouth had a family of Humboldts to see. At the time we hadn’t booked our South American cruise but a couple of years after these photos we would be walking among a relative species, Magellanic penguins.

Grayson Perry Art Exhbition

Properly titled Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! and taking place in the Arnolfini, this free exhibition showcased a huge amount of Grayson’s vases, sculptures, tapestries, and other art across three floors. It was wonderful to see so many objects in the flesh that we’d previously admired in some of his TV shows, knowing the meaning behind a lot of them. I was so engrossed I only took a few photos on my phone. If you get a chance to go then you definitely should.

Bristol

Outside the art gallery we were in time for the end of a protest taking place which was a shame as I like to photograph protests, especially for causes I believe in. We crossed over the pedestrian bridge and took a look at the nearby Millenium Square with it’s interesting sculptures and huge, open space.

Bristol Aquarium

From the square we then headed into the Bristol Aquarium past a sculpture with a sign requesting that people not climb on it. Why on earth would I be mentioning a sculpture with a sign requesting people not climb on it? Could it be because of the kids climbing on it while their parents sat facing them and the plainly visible sign from a few metres away smoking cigarettes? Possibly. In the aquarium my camera was spotted and I was told that photographs were permitted but no flash photography was allowed; fortunately, I’m well aware of this restriction and I rarely carry a flash on my camera body anyway. Why am I mentioning this? Could it be because there was an announcement while we were looking around reminding people not to use flash because someone clearly was? Possibly.

Anyway, a very large, well laid-out aquarium with a couple of star exhibits, those being the multitude of pregnant seahorses we saw in a number of tanks and the very active, surprisingly fast-moving (and difficult to photograph in low light) octopus. I took some video on my phone too with limited success but it does get across just how the tentacles move and roll over one another as the creature moves.

The Weston-super-Mare SeaQuarium does manage to pack in quite a bit more than you expect from its apparent size from outside. One area where it is superior to a lot of other sealife exhibits we’ve seen is that it’s considerably brighter in a lot of places which aids in photography, always a tricky area when visiting these places as you have to ramp the ISO up massively high, often have to fight with the camera to hit the focus correctly, and have to accept lots of noise in the resulting pictures.

There had been nobody else in the SeaQuarium when we first arrived which wasn’t that surprising with it being a Tuesday at the end of October but we were pleased to see close to a dozen were present by the time we left. As expected, it wasn’t the most amazing aquarium we’ve visited but there was more than enough to see for anyone who likes these sorts of places.

As Halloween was upon us there was a section of the building given over to scary exhibits. My wife, suspecting (correctly) that such a place would contain a spider stayed away but I ventured inside the dark area. Some leaf insects were surprising additions as I don’t really consider them terrifying to anybody. A coiled, giant millipede was motionless, as was the anticipated tarantula at the back of its home. The clever area was a glass room next to which was a section you could enter and stick your head up into a perspex bowl to get up close with whatever was inside. I’ll admit that my heart was racing as my suspicion was that there would be more spiders and while I’m nowhere near as bad as my wife this wouldn’t be something I’d like to experience. The darkness in the room made it difficult to see anything which obviously sent the imagination into overdrive but once I’d actually spotted the terror I called my wife in for a look. Rats. We love rats. Adrenalin flowed away nicely. A nice little exhibit by Weston-super-Mare’s SeaQuarium.

The only aquarium in the Channel Islands has been refurbished throughout to create a unique, authentic attraction and venue, with a new focus on local marine fish and life. Re-branded as The Aquarium, Guernsey’s new underwater experience is housed in tunnels used by the Germans during the Occupation years as a store.

While I’d already ascertained that the aquarium would be on our planned walking route along the island’s coastline prior to taking our cruise on the Sapphire Princess I hadn’t checked the opening times (mostly because we hadn’t intended to visit it) and wasn’t certain that it would be open with it being fairly early in the tourist season and a Sunday. As it turns out, the aquarium opens daily from 10:00 until 17:00.

Upon entry and payment (£5 each for adults, £3 for children (not that there were any of those things with us)) we first noticed the sign above the nearest of the numerous fish tanks.

As previously quoted from the official website, Guernsey Aquarium boasts that it is the world’s only tunnel aquarium, used by Germans during the Second World War. Okay, that’s a pretty niche claim but I suppose a little bit of that sort of marketing doesn’t hurt.

As the aquarium has a fair bit of focus on local fish as opposed to more exotic, tropical sorts there was a slightly different feel to this aqaurium than others we’ve visited (and we do tend to visit a lot). My wife started remarking as she moved from tank to tank along one of the tunnels how tasty some of the fish looked and wondered if the building moonlighted as a seafood restaurant.

Some of the fish tanks were quite quirky with decor that included sea mines or action figures and there were some animatronic additions such as clams that would open and release bubbles. Sadly, the curse of aquariums and their low light requiring me to take photos at high ISO prevented any of the pictures of clams and bubbles from being good enough to share.

The aquarium isn’t the largest one or the most impressive one you’ll ever visit but it’s not that expensive and it was good to get out of the sun for a bit while we were there (we also bought a raspberry slushie in the gift shop to try to rehydrate a little bit and gave ourselves the lasting memory of a huge sugar rush and ice headaches). It won’t take you long to look around what it has to offer but I think it’s worth a nose, especially if you’ve got kids who like these sorts of places.

Aquarium La Rochelle is a hard-to-miss building on the quayside to the south of the tourist information centre and west of the city’s train station. When we arrived there was a queue of perhaps twenty people outside the building in a section that could clearly cope with a queue of a few hundred so we didn’t think that was too bad. However, it’s worth noting that the queue continues inside the building, doubling back alongside the queue outside so that twenty was probably closer to fifty.

Buying Tickets

There were signs outside advising people to buy their tickets online and I did consider doing that to skip the queue but ultimately opted not to; checking their site they recommend allowing two hours from purchase before using the ticket so it’s a good thing I didn’t try that.

It’s also worth noting that there appeared to be a couple of ticket machines inside the building too but nobody in the queue was using them so, again, I didn’t look them over. If you’re a general visitor to the city then you might want to look at either of those ways to beat the queue but if you’re a cruise visitor (and we were, this being the second stop on our week-long Sapphire Princess cruise) then you can present your boarding card at the desk for a small discount of two euros each. Weigh up the saving in money over the saving in time and make a decision there.

Tickets purchased, you enter a room simulating an elevator descent. After some rumblings and clankings a second door opens and you pass through a circular tunnel with cascading water around its edges.

From here on you’re in the main aquarium and you can expect the usual array of tanks filled with fishes and other forms of sealife plus plenty of information boards. La Rochelle aquarium is large, spread over two floors, and with very clean glass on the vast majority of tanks (commendable indeed with the number of children present during our visit) allowing for good, clear views of the aquatic life and plenty of chances for decent photo-taking. The ambient light – sensibly, like most aquariums – is very low, though, so you’ll need to ramp that ISO setting up on your camera.

I’m always pleased to see jellies in an aquarium. It’s long been a wish to have a wall of the peaceful, fluorescing creatures next to where I work so that any time I need a relaxation break I can just turn and look at them.

In addition to the marine-oriented nature of the majority of the exhibits in the aquarium there was also a tropical zone. We’ve been in some places like this before where the ambient heat and humidity plays havoc with your camera lens but I’m happy to report this wasn’t the case in La Rochelle. There wasn’t a huge amount to see in this area for me, although if you are a keen botanist you’re bound to find things of interest, but my wife has a thing for turtles, terrapins, and tortoises and she, at least, was pleased to see a fair few of the favoured creatures around.

There wasn’t anything unique about the variety of sealife on display in La Rochelle Aquarium but if you’re fond of this sort of diversion when you’re out and about then it’s a very good example and a recommended visit. The layout was particularly good, guiding you through the rooms with their tanks well, and even though the place was a little more child-heavy than I typically like (being a curmudgeon) it never felt crowded or too noisy.

By far the most impressive places were the full-wall tank-viewing rooms looking into impressively large volumes of water. In these rooms were rows of seating, much of which was filled when we were there by people quietly contemplating the view and immersing themselves in the serenity such an experience seems to exude. These were the places to see the sharks and turtles, both of which I’m always happy to see at an aquarium and both of which I’m sure are big draws for most people too.

As you approach the main building have any bags on you open for inspection. You’re in a foreign country and the people there will speak their own language before they usually switch to the one you’re familiar with (if they can) and a blank look as you try to replay what you heard in your head hunting down key words you might remember from GCSE French at school will only lead to a repetition of the phrase and gesturing before your wife slaps your arm and says “Let him see inside the camera bag dumbass!”

Inside the main building you’ll discover a lot of exhibits on show without you needing a ticket. These will be submersible craft for the main part that have played key roles in exploration of the undersea kingdom. While these might provide some distraction they weren’t what we were there for. In this area there are also toilets and a café.

Paying for your ticket lets you exit the main building into the enclosed external area where a number of other pieces of maritime history are located and where you can gain access to the Titanic exhibition, the aquarium, and the nuclear submarine. Of these three things it was only the latter two we were interested in during this trip; we’re always fond of aquariums and if we can set foot on a historic vessel then we always will too.

Le Redoutable Nuclear Submarine

The main thing we wanted to see at Cité de la Mer was the submarine museum Le Redoutable. It is the largest and only nearly-complete ballistic missile submarine open to the public and we are always keen to do the firsts, lasts, largests, longests, etc. whenever we travel to places around the world.

An audio guide available in several languages can be picked up as you scan your ticket in at the entrance to the submarine and it provides one of the most informative descriptions of the places you explore as you make your way through the impressive vessel. One thing to note, though, if you’re the sort of person who likes to ignore the audio guide and wander around on your own is that the passageways through Le Redoutable are narrow, often only permitting one person to pass and this, coupled with the guide often telling you to stop and look at certain things, means that you won’t really be able to progress any faster than those with the guides ahead of you on the boat (not ship). You may as well use the guide and you won’t be sorry that you did.

Commissioned in 1971 and decommissioned twenty years later, Le Redoutable was the first of the Redoutable-class submarines constructed for the French Navy. She was fitted with 16 ballistic missile launchers and being in the section where each of the missiles could be independently launched was very impressive. Each missile tube had its own controls, its own computers, and seemingly anachronistic brass tubes to ensure communication could be maintained even in the event of failures there. The audio guide went into some detail about what and how long it took to launch a nuclear missile (something no submarine has ever done), making a mockery of most of the movies or books that might have implied some rogue person might be able to do it on a whim. Did you know that a compressed air bubble is in the tube with the missile so that during launch it expands and keeps the missile completely dry until it ignites its rocket upon leaving the water?

Le Redoutable was a very functional boat for the most part with little room given over to the niceties of life under the water for months on end. The submarine produced its own fresh water and oxygen, could manufacture and replace any part, needed to be able to cope with compression and expansion of the hull of several centimetres when attaching fittings, and had plenty of protection against heat, noise, and, of course, radiation. The reactor section of the submarine had been removed (obviously) but had it been still there and operating it could have powered the entire city of Cherbourg. A walkway allowed you to wander through where the reactor had once been.

My favourite part of Le Redoutable was the very, very 1970s decor of the meeting room area. Looking like something straight from UFO this really appealed to my love of that period’s style.

The audio guide tour of Le Redoutable takes about 35 minutes so you can add on another five or ten to that to cover stepping through doorways, taking photos, etc. Dropping off our guides and stepping away from the submarine we were afforded views of our cruise ship, Arcadia, showing just how close to the attraction ships dock before we made our way to the next point of interest in Cité de la Mer. I can see our balcony in a couple of these photos.

Aquarium

As I’ve already mentioned we are keen on aquariums and you can almost guarantee that if there’s one in a city we’re visiting then there’s a good chance we’ll end up paying to take a look around it. Like everything else in Cité de la Mer the aquarium was on a grand scale, obviously designed to cope with a huge number of visitors at a time. Because of the time that we visited it, perhaps, the place was mostly empty and this suited us perfectly. The aquarium building is set over two levels with a number of marine artifacts and pieces of accompanying information along with some interactive components but it was really the sealife that we’d come to see. There’s something so very soothing about staring into tanks and watching the varied creatures swimming or crawling around.

There weren’t a huge number of tanks but the cleanliness of the glass was superb and the variety of sealife was enough to get a good look around and enjoy what was there. One tank did extend over the two floors of the aquarium building and it was possible to get partially underneath looking up. This produced an unsettling effect in considering just how much weight of water there was poised above you, but unsettling in a good way and one of the highlights of the visit.

Prior to the aquarium in Cité de la Mer the last sealife centre we’d been to had also been in France – La Rochelle Aquarium – and that had been more of what we consider a traditional aquarium. The large tank was impressive but the small number of tanks and apparent waste of space, perhaps simply because we’d timed our visit to an exceptionally lucky quiet period, left us feeling satisfied but not blown away by the exhibit in Cherbourg.

A quick show of our cruise cards as we exited Cité de la Mer allowed us to enter the old cruise terminal and make our way back to the ship.

Conclusion

If you’re visiting Cherbourg then Cité de la Mer is easily the most interesting thing to see with the added bonus of having the most chance of it being actually open. As people who love naval history the price of admission was worth it just to explore Le Redoutable for us. Getting to see numerous other undersea vessels as well as an aquarium and the chance to explore a museum dedicated to the Titanic too should make this a no-brainer decision should you find yourself in the French city.

Breakfast out of the way, we left the hotel and headed south(ish) to take a walk through Plymouth Hoe. The Hoe is the public park on top of the (surprisingly to us) rocky mound that dominates the seafront of Plymouth and is probably best known as being the setting for the very likely untrue game of bowls that Sir Francis Drake had while waiting for the tide to turn so he could set sail with the fleet to take on the Spanish Armada. These days the Hoe is the home to a number of war memorials (including one by the architect Sir Robert Lorimer that is one of a set of three, with one of the others being situated in our home city of Portsmouth), houses a statue of Sir Francis Drake, includes the landmark lighthouse of Smeaton’s Tower, and provides fabulous views out over Plymouth Sound.

As we stood there, taking in the view in the pleasantly warm and clear day (the last such day weather-wise for our break as it would turn out) we suddenly heard a man shouting at us. Initial thoughts that we might be trespassing or taking a photo of something we shouldn’t proved to be wrong as it turned out he’d spotted my camera and wanted to know if I had a telephoto lens on it. I did have a telephoto lens with me for this trip but I’d decided that I’d leave it at the hotel today and use my workhorse lens, the 24-105mm instead. The reason this person had wanted to know was because he wanted to draw our attention to something we’d not spotted while gazing out across the water, that being a submarine. A telephoto lens, of course, would have given me the chance to see far more detail of the naval vessel but I had to suffice with wider shots instead. This was only the second time we’d seen a submarine cruising on the surface of the water, the first being several years earlier in Chile at Puerto Montt, and it was great to be reminded of that trip.

Smeaton’s Tower is probably the most prominent landmark on Plymouth Hoe and it’s certainly something we noticed on our first evening from the water on our harbour boat trip. The tower is not a working lighthouse but it once formed the upper part of the Eddystone Lighthouse which was in operation for over a hundred years from 1759 on the submerged Eddystone Rocks fourteen kilometres south of Cornwall. John Smeaton, the civil engineer tasked with the construction of the original lighthouse, used hydraulic lime to set concrete underwater and form the base of the navigational aid, and it was only erosion of the underlying rocks that necessitated the building of a replacement beacon and the deconstruction then subsequent repositioning of the tower in Plymouth as a memorial.

Tinside Lido was the next sight to greet our eyes as we progressed as far forward on the mainland as we could, and what a lovely sight it was too. We were lucky to see it on such a pleasant day, to see the cyan of the shallow pool contrasting with the deep blue of the sea, but it was the design that was most appealing. A lot of lidos were built in the UK in the 1930s and were pretty conventional, rectangular affairs, but Plymouth’s 1935 lido incorporates the fabulous curves and straight lines of the Art Deco movement and benefits from its location at the base of the surrounding cliffs with views out over Plymouth Sound. Portsmouth has a lido, too, but here’s an area where Plymouth beats our home city hands down.

Our walk along Plymouth seafront continued in an anticlockwise direction and took us past the imposing fortifications of the Royal Citadel. We’d wanted to take a look inside but it wasn’t the Covid restrictions in place that stopped us; rather, it was the requirement that all visitors have photo ID. For my wife this presented a problem since she doesn’t drive and the only photographic ID she has is her passport which didn’t make the trip along the coast with us on account of us not needing to leave the country. A stupid barrier to visiting a historical site, in my opinion. A small bit of history, anyway, since I like to share knowledge: the citadel sits on the spot of a former fort that had been erected in the sixteenth century. The English Civil War of the seventeenth century saw Plymouth take the side of the ultimately victorious Parliamentarians, during which it was besieged for several years without falling, but following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 construction of the Royal Citadel took place and the cannons were positioned facing both out to sea and towards the city on land, supposedly as a warning not to oppose the Crown again.

Our path took us sloping downwards back towards Sutton Harbour where we’d enjoyed some time on both of the previous evenings thanks to its attractive views and abundance of pubs.

The Mayflower Steps area of Plymouth includes a rather odd sculpture, known locally as the Barbican Prawn despite clearly not being a prawn at all. Its actual name is Leviathan and it was unveiled in 1996 during modernisation works along this stretch of the waterfront. Designed by Brian Fell, Leviathan includes an angler fish’s head with lobster claws, the fin of a John Dory and the tail of a plesiosaur, finished off with the feet of a cormorant, because of course it does. We liked it.

It wasn’t all just aimless wandering on this day of walking along Plymouth’s seafront; we actually had a tiny, tiny plan, and that was to pay a visit to the National Marine Aquarium. We are fond of an aquarium when we travel around the world. Plymouth has hosted an aquarium since 1888 but the National Marine Aquarium was built and opened in the mid-1990s during the Barbican modernisation works and it is the UK’s largest aquarium. Arranged around specific zones and featuring some huge tanks to house the thousands of creatures this was a lovely place to visit. I could sit and stare at an aquarium tank of fish swimming for hours and fortunately several tanks had seating in front of them to allow just that. Obviously, we didn’t spend hours here, though. This is definitely something worth hitting if you ever find yourself in or around Plymouth.

This wouldn’t be the only aquarium we’d visit during our West Country short break as Weymouth, where we’d be off to the day after this gentle amble around Plymouth, also housed one and, as I’ve mentioned, we are a sucker for them.

It was the afternoon by now so we grabbed ourselves some liquid refreshment from The Ship (where we’d paid a visit previously; see: A Few Plymouth Pubs) then hunted down a shop we’d spotted overnight in the city, a wine and spirits specialist called Barrel & Still. Fabulous range of alcohol for sale plus the ability to have some free samples too. Which we did.

Not wanting to lug our bottled purchases around we decided to head as directly as possible back to our hotel to drop them off. This took us in a westwards direction along Royal Parade, more-or-less the main road through the centre of Plymouth and one lined with some sights of interest. First up was the Minister Church of Saint Andrew. Externally, this church looks the same as it did in 1500 even though it was bombed during the war and required significant rebuilding in the years afterwards.

The two buildings that really leaped out at me because of my fondness for architecture were the House of Fraser and the Pearl Assurance buildings either side of the precinct bisecting Royal Parade. The House of Fraser building was formerly the Dingles department store and it was the first building to be designed as part of the complete redevelopment of Plymouth after the war. There is an absolutely fascinating PDF that explains the architectural visions and plans for the city – Plymouth: Vision of a Modern City – and if you’ve any interest in town-planning or architecture then I can’t recommend that enough, but since you’re you and I know you well enough to know you don’t have that sort of attention span then I’ll give the short version here: Scottish modernist architect Thomas Tait, more widely known for his Art Deco works, at the end of his career was brought in as design consultant for the new plans for Plymouth in the late 1940s and produced the Dingles store as well as associating with designs for several other buildings. Individual architects and building owners were free to create their own designs within the style guidelines so as to produce something not strictly uniform but that fitted together; new buildings with a sense that they’ve stood for far longer. You can see some modernist, brutalist elements in these buildings despite the classical decorative pieces and use of Portland Stone. It’s all a wonderful testament to the changing times and rebuilding for the future taking place post-war.

There were plenty more buildings encompassing brutalism, modernism, and Art Deco styles to gaze at on the walk back too.

Finally, there were some public pieces of art to admire. Or not. I like street art and I know that art is subjective but what we saw in Plymouth was some of the most uninspiring work. It felt like someone had broken out some oversized set squares and geometric templates and just filled in the spaces. Personal opinion, but yuk. The somewhat abstract sculpture was more to my liking. This was the seven-metre-high bronze called Messenger by Joseph Hillier; apparently a woman crouching and inspired by an actor preparing for a role, this more closely resembled an American Footballer in a three-point stance at the line of scrimmage to us.

We dropped off items at the hotel, checked that my wife’s niggling injury wasn’t too problematic for walking some more, then headed off again, this time southwest from our hotel as there was an area of land near the water there that we hadn’t checked over which might have been hiding a fabulous pub. It wasn’t. In fact this turned out to be uninteresting as we approached so we veered south to the seafront once more to see what might be of interest down there and to see how the sun might affect the look of the shoreline as the sun started to sink towards the horizon.

We spotted a fairly lively-looking place by the waterfront actually called The Waterfront but there was a queue of people waiting to be seated so the option of enjoying the sunset with a drink evaded us. However, we also saw what appeared to be a security guard in front of an interesting-looking piece of sculpture in iron resembling a block-type figure staring out to sea. We didn’t know it at the time but this was LOOK II, a work by Sir Antony Gormley.

We found an empty bench and enjoyed the Plymouth seafront view for a while in the warm, early evening sunshine. We were quite surprised by the number of people swimming in the water and spent quite some time being entertained by humans and dogs leaping from the stone pier near us into the sea.

With dining and drinking options looking sparse along this part of the coastline we decided that we’d head back around to Sutton Harbour again where we were certain we’d find something. This gave us a chance to see the Belvedere Wedding Cake (to give it its local name) up close. A belvedere is a type of open summer house and this three-tiered building was constructed in 1891. The site on which it stands was formerly a camera obscura offering views over Plymouth Sound, below which there was a bullring (where bulls were tied up and baited by dogs for entertainment and to tenderise the meat; indeed, butchers were fined if they killed bulls without baiting them).

With the sun at our backs we retraced some of the day’s earlier walking route along the seafront, enjoying the views down to the rocky shore and the people taking advantage of the warmth to bathe or swim.

Our last meal in Plymouth was at the Pier Masters House. It’s a very nice-looking building on the waterfront with plenty of seating outside and in and we elected to dine inside as the sun was disappearing from the sky by this time. A warm welcome was sadly the best that can be said of the experience with service being perfunctory (and barely even that when it came time to pay the bill) and the fish being disappointingly overcooked and dry.

We grabbed a couple of final drinks near the harbour and called it a night.

That brings our stay in Plymouth to an end. It was certainly not what we were expecting geographically but there were lots of historical and architectural elements we enjoyed a lot and we wouldn’t be averse to visiting again when this pandemic is under control and life is a bit more normal.

The following morning we would be relocating along the coast to Weymouth for three days as part of our West Country break and we’d be making a stop in Sidmouth to break the drive up which will be covered in the next post in this travelogue series.

The view from our hotel window right on the seafront was very nice first thing in the morning. Mostly blue skies, calm-looking water, people out taking their dogs for walks along the promenade and across the sand; but the wind was pretty strong and cold and we knew that the forecast was for the conditions to change quite significantly.

Breakfast done, hoodies on, we headed off northwards along Weymouth beach, one eye on the increasing cloud cover and another always looking for something to take a photo of. I was in full Marty Feldman mode. One of the first things to catch our attention was a crow trying to extract the inhabitant of a shell from its protective layer. It was doing that bird thing where they pick the shell up, flap into the air, then drop it to crack it open, only it wasn’t flying high enough and the shell was resolutely remaining intact. We offered some words of encouragement and tried to instruct the bird that it needed more altitude but our efforts were in vain as it transpired that the corvid didn’t understand English. Ridiculous. Coming over here to our beaches and not even speaking the language. Confident, however, that it would learn – they are fabulously smart after all – and aware that we were getting odd stares from people out and about that conveyed a mix of confusion and suspicion at our gesturing and talking to a bird on a beach, we pressed on.

It’s practically impossible to walk along the seafront at Weymouth and not be struck by the sight of the Jubilee Clock Tower. This is on account of it being revoltingly ugly. Standing on a base of Portland Stone and constructed from wrought iron in 1888 to commemorate Queen Victoria‘s Golden Jubilee the bold colour scheme was applied in the 1920s during the terrible taste famine that blighted the south coast of England.

From something garish (but still lovely in its own way) to something undeniably beautiful next with the sight of the Pier Bandstand right on the water’s edge. Observant people and possibly even you might have already realised that what’s pictured clearly isn’t a pier and clearly isn’t a bandstand but nobody ever questions why we still refer to people in parliament as politicians when diabolically duplicitous detritus is what they all are so here we are. In fact, as you’ve probably guessed, this structure used to extend out to sea and on that pier there was a bandstand but neither now remain. The pier was constructed just ahead of the outbreak of war in the late 1930s and incorporates Art Deco design like many similar seaside attractions around the UK’s coast but with some early modernist construction techniques. Sadly, those techniques weren’t robust enough to withstand nature and the test of time. In its heyday Weymouth’s pier hosted dances, concerts, wrestling, roller skating, and Miss Weymouth contests but following the decision to demolish the pier the remainder of the building that stands today is home to an amusement arcade and an Italian restaurant. We would be visiting it later in the day.

The sand of the beach farther south had given way to shingle at this point but it was no less an attractive, typically traditional, British seaside to walk along, or be blown along as was the case for us. Buildings along the shoreline had all the elements of Victorian and Edwardian resorts you’d expect to see on vintage postcards.

We knew we’d reached the point along the beach at which we’d need to turn inland once we hit the stone jetty. Rather than being protection for the shore this stone outcrop actually protects an outlet of water that runs under the beach and nearby roads. I used the spot to snap a few photos of some of the cruise ships anchored in Weymouth Bay – you know me and my love of cruise ships – but the promised rain was clearly getting extremely close now and the darkening clouds rolling in looked ominous against the bright colours of the seafront chalets.

Our first stop of the day was at SEA LIFE Weymouth to give it its apparently official name, but I’ll be slipping and referring to it as “the Sea Life Centre” on occasion (or even just Sealife Centre) throughout picture captions and in this account of our day simply because I have an aversion to putting things in all capitals for no obvious reason and, to me, all aquariums are Sea Life Centres as the first one we ever visited in Portsmouth was named that so the name’s stuck. Incidentally, the one in Portsmouth is now called Blue Reef but we still call it the Sea Life Centre much to the annoyance of the manager when I mentioned it to him several years ago.

Getting into the town’s aquarium was entertaining. We’d needed to pre-book tickets and an arrival time and we turned up just as that slot – and indeed the aquarium itself – opened for the day. There was a small, socially-distanced queue ahead of us and entry to the building could only be done upon a satisfactory temperature test using a digital infrared thermometer. I’ve talked about infrared thermometers and our quite surprising experience with them where my wife’s concerned on our arrival in Weymouth (have a quick read of the opening paragraphs of our First Evening in Weymouth to get up to speed there) but the short recap of that is that they’re useless, people don’t know how to use them, and they have big problems with my wife.

Well…

The young man with the thermometer was standing in place, pointing his gun at people’s heads, glancing at it, nodding, then allowing people to shuffle forward. It was slow-going because the timed, pre-booked ticket system still seemed to involve an awful lot of faffing inside the building but it was gradually progressing and while the rain had finally arrived on the scene it was thankfully little more than a misty drizzle at this point. It was our turn.

The gun was pointed at my head. The trigger was depressed. The man glanced down, nodded, then turned to my wife.

The gun was pointed at her head. The trigger was depressed. The man glanced down, frowned, then tried again. Then again. Then from closer. Then from a little bit back. Then pointed it at her wrist. Then tried again on her forehead. He tried it on me again and it apparently worked fine. Back to my wife. The trigger was depressed. The bottom of the thermometer suddenly opened up and the batteries ejected onto the ground. The batteries were retrieved, rubbed together for luck, reinserted, and the thermometer was tried again. Nothing on my wife.

“I’m just going to assume you’re okay,” he said nervously, looking at us and the queue behind us that was growing with every second in the strengthening rain.

And that’s the story of how we discovered my wife has a built-in infrared thermometer electronic warfare system.

As you can almost see from the map of Sea Life Weymouth above the exhibits at the attraction are set in zones of interest and on our visit, because of all the Covid precautions in place, there was a one-way system in operation. That system couldn’t be entirely followed because some of the spots double-backed on themselves and we ended up looping around on a couple of occasions anyway in order to escape a particularly noisy section occupied by screaming or shouting kids in the hope that a second wander through might be more peaceful. The enclosed spaces with hard walls and glass surfaces do amazing things with echos of children’s lungs, but not good amazing things.

The star of the Sea Life Centre for us was the octopus. It’s no secret that we’re drawn to intelligence – it’s why we’re together and why we despise most of humanity, after all – and you don’t even have to read all the accounts of these fantastic creatures working with tools or escaping their tanks to sense the thinking going on beyond those fascinating eyes.

Seeing a fish swimming upside down immediately made me think that either something was wrong with it or with Earth’s gravitational pull localised to that tank in the aquarium. A quick discussion with my wife as to which was more likely concluded it probably was the fish after all which was disappointing from a major physics discovery perspective. As it turned out, neither was correct, which just goes to show why arguments of the type Is It X Or Is It Y? are inherently flawed. Lionfish have strong control over their swim bladder and swimming upside down is perfectly normal behaviour for them. I mean, it’s still a bit weird and freaks out the other fish, but it is at least normal.

Hey, Ted, are you upside down or am I?

It’s me, Jim, don’t panic. Just floating on my back for a bit, looking at the world in a strange, new way.

Phew! Thought there might be a local problem with the gravitational vector strong enough to offset the effects of the fundamental interactive forces of nature for a second.

Nope. Just thinking about how if the surface of the water was really the ground.

Are you on something?

Sure am, Jim. High as a freaking kite.

Weymouth Sea Life Centre has not one but two species of penguin to gaze at (ideally with clothes pegs on your nose). The first of those is the Humboldt Penguin, a vulnerable species indigenous to northern Chile and Peru. A far-less-threatened species and therefore far-less-likely-to-be-seen species of penguin – at least outside its natural habitat – is the Fairy Penguin which is stupidly cute, but since it can typically be found in Australia is quite likely venomous or something. Quite why they were in Weymouth wasn’t clear but never rule out a lack of bar work during lockdown meaning they needed something else to do.

A couple of unusual attractions next. The Night and Day Experience recreates a coral reef across a full day cycle, incorporates some interactive elements, includes sea turtles (which my wife adores), and was mostly too dark to take any decent photos in. Other visitors’ children seemed to very much enjoy this area judging by the noise. Outside there was a Wetlands area (all the areas outside were wet by this time, but this was designed that way) which is there to encourage local species into the park. The pond and bushes should attract bees, birds, and butterflies, while the rusting car might persuade James May to nest.

Aquatic mammals were the next creatures to win our attention. We braved the spitty rain to stand and watch both seals and otters in their environments, the latter getting quite excited when they caught a glimpse of one of the employees at the Sea Life Centre, an indication that it may have been nearly time for food. It was interesting to observe that the seals seemed to be evolution saying “Let’s take a dog and put it in the water” while the otters were the result of a similar experiment with cats, yet in each case they behaved in the opposite manner to their land-based cousins with the laid-back attitude of the sea dogs and the irritatingly excitable attitude of the sea cats feeling completely wrong.

We almost left the aquarium at this point as it looked like the only zone we’d not explored – Castaway Bay; a splash zone for youngsters – didn’t have anything we’d want to see, but in the interests of completeness we decided at the last second to take a quick nose around it which was handy as that’s where we discovered the Rainforest area. There was a queue to get in because social distance markings were being observed by visitors but the narrowness of the entrance and the need of some people to stare at tanks for sometimes minutes at a time or to yell at little Bobby to get back and come look at the seaweed created a bottleneck. We waited patiently. Most people waited patiently. Some people barged through to see what the hold-up was and were duly and rightly beaten about the heads with sticks and told not to crowd or jump the queue. Or stared and tutted at. One of the two. I forget which.

For me, the stars of this final set of aquarium tanks to pass by were:

• Unicorn fish – Clearly the inspiration for a lot of psychedelic cartoon characters from the 1960s.
• Four-eyed fish – The unicorn fish may have had the nose but these are the nosy ones, ensuring they don’t miss any action above or below the surface of the water with their split eyes that can see in both air and water.
• Poison dart frogs – You have to love thinking about the microscopic evolutionary steps that led to this species of frog promoting the genes for “Screw this, I’m fabulous and I want people to see me!”

That brought our visit to Weymouth’s Sea Life Centre to an end. It was very good. This was the second aquarium we’d visited in a few days and if I had to compare then I’d say that Plymouth’s National Marine Aquarium was better for adults and older children with an eye towards education while Weymouth was far better for families and younger children in general. On a bright day and hopefully one devoid of global viruses running rampant it would be a great place to spend many hours.

This wasn’t a bright day. This was decidedly wet now. In fact, as we left the park the heavens really opened up. Luckily, SandWorld could barely be any closer to the aquarium so we were in and under shelter very quickly. This was very switfly a place we realised would likely also be quite lovely with good weather but it’s hard to get away from the fact that during our time there the general feeling was of something quite grim. The lack of colour probably had an impact. The sound of the rain tipping down onto the plastic overhead or the somewhat terrifying sound as the wind slammed into the sheeting or bent a nearby tree overhead to scratch along the roof also didn’t help. When you read those tales every Christmas of the people who visit local Winter Wonderland World attractions just so they can be quoted in newspapers saying “Our kids were expecting reindeers and igloos, not a shipping container with a bag of half-melted ice cubes suspended on string from the ceiling!” then there was just the merest hint of that about this place. Nature played a part, definitely, but the organisers could certainly look into making the site more appealing in these conditions.

There’s no disputing the quality of the artwork and intricacy in the details in making the sand sculptures, though, and many of the artists were working on them as we visited. With some families around it might have been nice if there was some indication of interaction or a look-up on occasion with a smile but since I own three t-shirts with variations of the phrase “Grumpy Bastard” on them and my wife invented the resting bitch face we really can’t comment too strongly on this. There were also some areas to play in the sand for kids and a shop selling anything even remotely sandy so since we didn’t catch it in its best light (I hope) I’d recommend it as worth a visit, especially if you’re planning on hitting the aquarium anyway.

That concluded the two main things we’d wanted to see on this day in Weymouth to an end but we still wanted to hit the museum that we’d failed to account for not being open the day before. That meant a trek all the way back along the beach – with a ten-minute shelter in some public gardens when the driving rain forced us and a couple of other people scurrying to limit just how drenched we were all getting – and since it was early afternoon we also took a minor detour to one of the bars we’d visited before, the Nautico Lounge, to grab a bite to eat and a drink. The museum is on the south side of the harbour and we timed our subsequent walk to it to perfection and got to see Weymouth’s bascule bridge opening to let some boats in and out.

Weymouth Museum is not big. It’s probably one of the smallest museums we’ve ever visited, but this is reflected in its low entry fee. Don’t miss it if you’re visiting the town, however, because some of the stuff there is great, and the wartime exhibits in particular were fabulous. My absolute favourite: there was a transcription on the walls from a 1978 edition of the Dorset Evening Echo of the account of Lieutenant John Hoare accepting the surrender of a German U-Boat in 1945 and escorting it back to Portland which, if it’s still there when you visit, I insist you read. It’s an incredible account that really brings home the human side of war as the two sides exchanged stories and photos of loved ones on the submarine heading towards Dorset; respect; camaraderie of people in similar professions just doing their job; then despair at the treatment of the Germans on land by superiors wanting photo opportunities and obstinate Americans wanting to throw their weight around.

All this fraternisation may appear reprehensible. Judging by the home papers there is a hysteria or hatred about – a desirable thing maybe in war, but I cannot say I like it now we have won.

The horrors of the concentration camps were unbelievable. But I refuse to hold all Germans responsible for such crimes. I would stake my life that the Germans I have met could not, and would not, be devils incarnate.

That certainly added a sombre mood to proceedings even if it was thoroughly interesting but it did at least mark the end of the cultural aspects to the day. For the remainder we’d be indulging in what we do best thanks to excessive practice: eating and drinking.

Our plan was to first have a couple of drinks in the Doghouse Micropub that we’d discovered the previous day and which was our sort of place. And that’s exactly what we did. We then planned to freshen up back at the hotel, have a bit of a rest, then head off for our meal once the time was right. And that’s exactly what we didn’t because some people came in the pub who we then started chatting to. So we had to stay for some more drinks. Quite a few more. We’re easily swayed by good conversation in close reach of alcohol. In fact it reached that point where I suddenly realised we had twenty minutes to get to the restaurant and we had to down our glasses quickly and say our goodbyes.

As you’ve previously read if you’ve not skimmed past, Al Molo was on the beach in Weymouth in the former Pier Bandstand building. We arrived dead on time for our sitting and proceeded to enjoy some pleasant views of the sea in a really lovely location ahead of a very enjoyable meal served by an extremely friendly waitress. I can’t quite remember what we ate but you might be able to work it out from the photos. I do know that we didn’t stop drinking but that’s what happens when you give us the opportunity to do so. At the end of the meal we had for a brief moment wine to finish, a cocktail each that we’d ordered, and a shot each of limoncello (for that’s the law in Italian eateries) all on the table. I’m not complaining.

Al Molo gets the thumbs up from us if you like some fine dining and you’re in Weymouth.

This was our last night in Weymouth and we spent the final twenty minutes outside in it walking back along the promenade to our hotel. It was still raining, as you can tell. On the next and last day of our West Country break to come we would spend an evening in Southampton to meet up with some travel blogging friends for a meal and ahead of that we would pay a visit to Beaulieu Motor Museum, a reasonably regular haunt for us not too far from home. That will be covered in the concluding post in this travelogue series.

After our walk through the The Garden Society Of Gothenburg And The Palm House we continued in a roughly southerly direction. Architecture in Gothenburg was fairly mixed so elements stood out as a result. Immediately outside the park we spotted a nineteenth century theatre, then one road over something that could have had a history as a church or fire station but was now a table tennis facility.

As we approached the Universeum there was a lot of building work taking place; excavations, demolitions, and construction were in evidence in every direction. With plenty of boards up to protect the roads and passers-by from any debris or to prevent trespassing there were also a lot of canvasses on which street artists could work. Actually getting any photos of any of it was incredibly difficult, though, as the pedestrianised areas to walk along were very narrow, squeezed between the busy main roads and hoardings. We thought we might be able to find more advantageous photography positions after our visit to the museum but that would not prove to be possible.

The Universeum itself was a very impressive building with a multistorey jungle setting inside one side accessed along bridges and up and down steps, but also capable of being visited by elevators on each level. Airlock-style entrances prevented any of the wildlife from escaping because some of the birds were free-flying. It was a great environment but warm, busy, and with lots of ups and downs requiring a fair bit of exertion – and we’re no spring chickens – that we soon realised that our tactic of entering at the lowest level was a mistake.

We abandoned our look low down and took the elevator to the top with the intention to explore from there downwards instead. Happily, we also saw that it was possible to head out onto a balcony area so it gave us a chance to get some fresh air and see Gothenburg from high altitude. The metallic-looking towers we immediately saw belonged to a hotel. The nearby dinosaur sculpture looked like it might have emerged from the excavation work taking place in all directions.

While one side of the Universeum held the tropical zoo-like environment, on the other side on each of the floors there were other rooms and that gave us the chance to look around the aquarium. Clean, large tanks, lots of varieties of fish and coral and sea urchins, and we’re rarely if ever disappointed with just stopping for a moment or two to watch fish swim effortlessly around.

Back to the other animals then before we decided to leave, and that took us past numerous reptiles, and, like the fish, they’re creatures that just make me relax. A lovely variety of snakes and lizards to admire curled up in various desert or jungle settings, and exotic flowers to ooh and aah over as well.

We spent less time in the Universeum than we’d expected, despite its large size and arguably good attractions that should have suited us perfectly. In truth, this was more a place for families with kids, so if you’re visiting Gothenburg with children then there’s a lot to recommend here, especially given the large amusements area next to the Universeum that we weren’t interested in checking out.

We mostly enjoyed the building and things in the Universeum although we encountered some behaviour from locals – visitors and staff – that we wouldn’t quite describe as rude, but would definitely put down as just over the border there in Unfriendlyland. It affected the experience. You know the stereotype about Londoners on tube trains being sullen and unapproachable? This was like that, but colder. We’d interacted with a couple of people while walking around the Palm House before this, too, with similar results; holding a door open for someone and smiling but being met with an icy stare and not even a nod of acknowledgement; that sort of thing. Something about the people of Gothenburg did not endear us to their city.

And that’s part of the reason that we decided that we’d cut short our walk around the city at this point. There was another area we’d considered taking a look at on this day in Gothenburg: Haga, the old town. This would have meant the almost-circular route we’d planned before returning to the shuttle bus pick-up point, but the general downbeat feeling at this point coupled with light rain that had started helped us to decide to head back early instead. In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll do just that when we say goodbye to Gothenburg.