That doesn’t mean we don’t like to walk along the beach on occasion since we never tire of looking out at the sea, but it tends to be away from the high seasons and that was the case in January 2011 when we thought it would be nice to blow away some of the mental cobwebs and inject ourselves with some bracing, salty air.

Hayling Island lies to the east of Portsea Island which is the location of our home city of Portsmouth. From our house to the beach on Hayling Island takes around 15-20 minutes by car. It was windy, it was chilly, and the sun was weak behind layers of light grey cloud, but we had the beach to ourselves for the most part which suited us just fine. The beach at Hayling Island is naturally sandy but increasing erosion and risk to the houses built near its shoreline has meant constant methods of slowing that loss of coastal real estate have been undertaken; at the time of these photos that was little more than dumping shingle onto the sand but more long-term protections have been added in recent years.

Signs of life mostly came in the form of watching windsurfers take advantage of what nature was hurling towards the shore. If you’re not a windsurfer then you probably didn’t know this – and if you’re a windsurfer then you probably don’t care about this – but windsurfing was invented at Hayling Island (see: Peter Chilvers for information on this and for the legal precedent it helped set in Britain for inventiveness and non-obviousness).

If you are thinking of heading to Hayling Island and following in our footsteps with a walk along the beach then you need to be aware that some areas of it are private and will not permit you to bring your metal horses. We were fortunate in having left ours at home that day.

It seems like there’s always been an amusement park of some description along Hayling Island seafront but the elements of what was there when we visited no longer exist.

I’d like to submit the following photograph of a proud flag of the Cross of St George in front of abandoned, rusting metal and the word Scared to the category of Allegories of Modern England, please.

We were certainly refreshed after our walk along the shore which seemed to be into the wind both leaving and returning to the car. Isn’t that always the case? We don’t visit Hayling Island very often because there’s not a lot to do, and it’s a place that can be a little hectic traffic-wise in the summer months because access to the island is limited to only a single road which is almost permanently being dug up and repaired for some reason, but it’s a pleasant-enough place to explore briefly.

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.