A full album of photos containing more images and higher quality images can be found on Flickr: Pompey Legends vs Lee Rigby Select XI.

A decent crowd turned up in pretty good conditions. Photos from the warm-up and coming out onto the pitch for the start of the game.

At half time the Rangers/Lee Rigby Select XI keeper Wayne Shaw posed for photos with the crowd. Two bands walked around the field playing competing tunes.

The match itself was a clean game, needing very little officiating. Pompey took the lead but went into the break at 1-1. Shortly after the restart they were losing but a hat trick from Hermann Hreidarsson saw them run out 4-2 winners.

The keeper famous for his pie-eating didn’t disappoint the fans at the end of game.

Congratulations to the winning Pompey team and well done to everyone involved for such a worthy cause.

We typically start with a circuit outside the walls of the castle. This affords views northwards to the chalk face of Portsdown Hill, then moving clockwise to views of Port Solent, then Portsmouth and the Spinnaker Tower, and finally down towards Gosport.

Heading inside there is a large, open, grass area where many people hold picnics. In one corner of the inner walls of the castle is a church. Strangely enough, in all the years we’ve been visiting Portchester Castle we’ve never once set foot in the church.

We don’t always venture into the castle keep but as the weather was nice on this visit in 2013 we did so and the photographs below are evidence of that. Not that you’ve any cause to disbelieve me.

If you’re going in the castle keep then you’re clearly going to want to climb to the top if it allows it and as luck would have it Portchester Castle does allow it. It can get very windy on the battlements as the castle is very close to the shoreline but the views across Portsmouth, Fareham, and Gosport as well as the overview of the castle’s layout and fortifications is definitely worth it.

In World War 2 Farlington Marshes was a designated Starfish Site, acting successfully as a decoy for bombing raids on a number of occasions. A couple of the decoy control points are still standing in the marshes.

The last photo is a rarity in my picture-taking: a hand-held, three-exposure, HDR photograph taken into the sun. Saturation levels are probably higher than my current taste in photo processing goes for but I think the shot is a pleasant enough one.

The festival was called Love Albert Road and it was the first of two that would be held on consecutive years before rising policing costs closed it down. As you can see from my photographs of the street event there was no sign of any police and we didn’t witness any trouble there at all during either year that we visited. Read into that what you will.

Part of the festivities along Albert Road included a parade celebrating Thailand and its culture. It’s interesting to note many years later that this was quite likely my first encounter with any Thai people at all and only a month and half after this event I would be visiting Bangkok as part of my honeymoon.

We spent about an hour in Albert Road walking along the length of the closed-off street three or four times, enjoying the different bands performing music along the pavements and getting some good Portsmouth and Southsea people-watching done too. We had a pleasant enough time that we’d go back the following year too.

Some of the maps and imagery as they related to nuclear fallout in the event of the cold war heating up were quite unnerving. I’m not entirely sure how effective a base the bunker would have been; its size didn’t seem to suggest it could be used for long periods. Nevertheless, the old military equipment and cold war feel from the place were excellent.

That was the plan right up until we opened the curtain in our room and saw that not only were we still a little way off the Southsea coastline but the sun hadn’t risen yet and was in the process of painting the eastern horizon with some gorgeous dawn colours against which one of the Solent forts was nicely silhouetted.

Breakfast was postponed and we headed out to the promenade deck of Astoria instead to enjoy nature’s accompaniment to our slow progression into our home port.

The first thing we passed along Portsmouth’s seafront is Southsea’s funfair, Clarence Pier (not much of a pier to be honest), which dates back to 1861 although its present form is a reconstruction following damage from German bombing raids in World War II. The most prominent visible structure in the low light of the early morning was the Solent Wheel which comes and goes with the seasons, it seems, and is considerably smaller than the original design called for.

Before we reached the major icon of the Portsmouth skyline (and another structure considerably smaller than the original design called for (I’m sensing a pattern)), the Spinnaker Tower, we then cruised past Spice Island (as it’s known locally for seedy, historical reasons), easily identified by the fortifications that protected it and the city and closed it off from the rest of Portsmouth, and from where the official name, Portsmouth Point, derives and from the abbreviation of which in ship’s logbooks – “Po’m P.” – is one explanation for the city’s nickname. The Square Tower and Round Tower are fairly easy to spot in the photographs below and the church in silhouette is the Garrison church, another victim of wartime raids in the area.

If you’re ever on a cruise out of Southampton you’ll probably be able to see the highly recognisable landmark of Portsmouth, the 170 metres-high Spinnaker Tower, from quite some distance away, and rounding Spice Island took Astoria right past it. The Spinnaker Tower, as its name implies, is designed to resemble the sail of a ship and is located in the waterfront outlet retail centre of Gunwharf Quays. We’ve been up the tower several times and it and Gunwharf are great and popular places to visit if you ever hit Portsmouth yourself. Listen to me sounding like a regular travel blogger there and recommending places!

The final stretch of water in through Portsmouth Harbour and towards the cruise port took Astoria past the headquarters for the Americas Cup yacht-building team, the Historic Dockyard, and the Royal Navy Dockyard (technically, Her Majesty’s Naval Base, Portsmouth but I don’t know anyone who calls it that).

The historic dockyard houses the famous maritime vessels you’re probably well aware of: HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, and Mary Rose. Again, trying not to sound too much like a cheesy tourist guide to my own city here but really worth a visit if you come down.

Friends of ours were married on HMS Warrior, the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warship. She’s a lovely ship to walk around.

HMS Victory is the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission, is the flagship of the First Sea Lord, and was Lord Nelson’s flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar. The upper masts and much of the rigging has currently been removed for repair hence her squat appearance but it’s still a very worthwhile visit if you get the chance just to see the spot where Nelson was killed on the deck.

The first English and oldest surviving dry dock in the world was built at Portsmouth in 1495 under the orders of the Tudor king Henry VII. These days the naval base, the oldest in the Royal Navy, serves as home to two thirds of its surface fleet. Cruising quietly past in the early hours of the morning we were strangely impressed by the number and variety of ships docked – it’s just something we’ve never really been that aware of living in the city all our lives – and were only slightly disappointed that the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth was out at sea on trials.

HMS Tyne is a River-class offshore patrol vessel that had a fairly short lifespan before being decommissioned early in 2018 only to be recommissioned a few months later when it was realised that the political implications of this country’s idiotic sprint into economic oblivion thanks to the racists, morons, and racist morons who voted for and are carrying through with Brexit despite all common sense might require some form of dick-waving to protect our microscopic fishing industry. You don’t want an occasional political rant when you’re reading a travel account? There’s always somewhere else dull to read.

HMS Dragon is pretty easy to spot if she’s docked in the Portsmouth Naval Base on account of her distinctive Welsh red dragon prow decorations; she is the only Royal Navy ship so decorated. Dragon is a Type-45 (Daring-class) air-defence destroyer.

One of Dragon’s sister ships is HMS Defender. As this is a travel-related site these days with an emphasis on cruising it’s worth noting that HMS Defender escorted Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 through the Gulf of Oman in 2016. Not a cruise ship or line we’ve experienced yet nor a part of the world we’ve cruised through, either, but we’d quite like to, especially if you can get a warship escort as well.

HMS Westminster is a Type 23 frigate. If you’ve ever seen the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies then you’ll have seen parts of HMS Westminster as she was used to film the interior shots of the vessels HMS Chester, HMS Devonshire, and HMS Bedford.

Another Type 23 frigate docked in Portsmouth Harbour as we cruised past was HMS St Albans. The cruiseferry GNV Atlas – in 2002 operating with P&O Ferries as the Pride of Portsmouth – crashed into HMS St Albans due to gale force winds before it had entered operational service, causing damage to the gun deck and bridge.

Currently awaiting disposal following decommissioning, the final naval ship we spotted on our approach to the port was RFA Gold Rover, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary Rover-class tanker. In its first year of commission, 1974, Gold Rover assisted with evacuation duties during the invasion of Cyprus by Turkish forces.

Some miscellaneous photos of the various warships around the naval dockyard of Portsmouth:

Finally, we approached the port itself, grabbed our bags from our room, left the keys in the room (a CMV thing: you leave the keys in the room on disembarkation otherwise you’re charged for them), had some breakfast in the buffet (fairly standard fare although the ability to have omelettes and fried eggs prepared for you at a station while you waited was quite a nice touch), then waited to be allowed to disembark. That took a surprisingly long time considering this had been an overnight cruise from Poole to Portsmouth (so there couldn’t have been customs to clear you wouldn’t have thought) but eventually we were called deck-by-deck to depart Astoria and our deck was called first. A ten minute walk from the port saw us arriving home.

I’m biased, of course, but Portsmouth is a fantastic port to cruise into because of all the incredible, history-rich sights you pass on the way in. To do so while the sun has just started lighting up the horizon is an incredible experience and one you shouldn’t miss if you ever have the chance.

This post mostly just comprises photographs taken on a ten kilometre walk (that’s six miles in old money) from our house in North End, Portsmouth to Hilsea and back on a partly sunny and partly cloudy Saturday, the purpose being not only to get some exercise and refresh our memories as to what the outside world was like but also to pick up some beer from a brewery in the city. We like supporting local businesses and we like beer. A lot. For future readers (hi to the pair of you) this walk took place as lockdowns eased following the dreadfully deadly and disruptive pandemic of 2020. Hopefully, the only lockdown and not the first of a series that will later become known collectively as the Plague Decade but I’ll edit this post if I’m one of the survivors should that happen.

The route we took followed the walking/running/cycling route that runs along Tipner Lake from the Mountbatten Centre at Alexandra Park to the Ports Creek (or Portsbridge) Roundabout that bridges the mainland of England with Portsea Island. Ooh! Feel your body quiver with this geographic information!

It was low tide as you can tell from the prevalence of mud and seaweed in the photos. You might also be wondering just what sort of lake is almost completely dry at low tide and the answer is that we just name things oddly in Portsmouth. Take a look at a map of the water to the west of Portsmouth and you’ll see Portchester Lake, Brick Kiln Lake, Spider Lake, Bombketch Lake, Wicor Lake, and Cams Lake too, and not a single one of them is a lake in the way a normal person might define one and expect to be surrounded by land. There’s a place in Portsmouth we call the Johnson & Johnson Roundabout. There are no Johnson & Johnson signs anywhere and it’s not a roundabout.

Anyway, some photos…

There has been a walking route of some description in this area for as long as I can remember, and when we were younger we used to do something called the Air Balloon Walk along it. You’re probably already either thinking “Okay, there’s no air balloon and it’s not a walk; I get it!” or “I’ve not heard of that dance before” but the truth is there was an air balloon (a pub by that name; fabulous place for rock; wall-to-wall metalheads; closed before its time because that’s the way of the world) and the walk was one that saw a fair number of us start in Cosham with a horrifying concoction of whatever vile things we could buy in an off-licence (think: Thunderbird, Cinzano Bianco, Mad Dog, that sort of thing) and swigging as we strolled south to the pub, before later moving onto Southsea for the clubs. Ah, memories. I’ve still just about got them.

I digress. Between 2017 and 2020 the whole area underwent some pretty extensive redevelopment works to improve sea defences. Sea defences on a lake. Yeah, don’t get me started on that again. Better and higher sea walls, better coastal erosion protection measures, changes to slipways, a shared use footpath, lots of wildflower planting, new tidal pools to encourage biodiversity, and social spots to enjoy the views was the result, and that’s what you’ll mostly see in the photographs here.

A couple of sights you’ll see if you walk this walk too. First up is the Sails of the South, a sculpture erected in 2001 between the northbound and southbound lanes of the M275, the motorway that permits one to escape Portsmouth at speed.

Other than the occasional bit of benching or sign indicating the sort of wildlife you can expect to see in the Tipner area the only other main distraction for the eyes on the southern portion of this Hilsea walk might be the allotments. Not something that’s ever appealed to us because it looks an awful lot like hard work but we can understand why others may feel differently. In addition to a few plot-owners tending to their spot of earth we also saw a couple of people clearly just sitting down and enjoying the fresh air, sunshine, and what views they had of the people like us walking along the path between them and what is often water. If you live in a place with no garden at all I can see why you might do that.

If you’re here for the wakeboarding photos then you’ll be pleased to know that your wait is over. At around the northernmost part of the walk to Hilsea there is a body of water that runs inside the path and parallel with the contours of the land with Tipner Lake and Portsbridge Creek. This is the Hilsea Lagoon, formerly a moat and part of the defensive fortifications along the land called the Hilsea Lines, becoming a boating lake in the mid-1930s. Right here you can find South Coast Wakepark and this or something similar has been in the area for several years. Well, it might have been here for years but we’ve never noticed it before because this recent wander beside the park was the first time we’d ever seen it in use. And I have to admit, it looked a lot of fun, even for people as totally inactive as us. We ended up watching for several minutes as someone was towed up and down the stretch of water, alternately using the rail at one end and the ramps nearer us.

We’d initially intended a circular route back to our house but realising that such a route would mean the second half of the walk would be along roads instead of by the shoreline this plan had already been rejected at this point in favour of a retracing of our steps instead so there are more photos of wakeboarders to come. First though, to the brewery.

We continued to the end of the lagoon, then crossed the main road over the bridge beside the old News Centre building.

Now, I love this building. Before the Spinnaker Tower this was one of the iconic buildings in the city. Concrete. Straight lines with a slight curve. Repetitive structures. That fabulous typeface for the word News. Lots of brutalist elements and I am a huge fan of brutalism. Weirdly, I don’t actually know anything about the history of this building with regards to its architect. As you can probably guess, though, it was the home of the Portsmouth News for a long time until the mid-2010s when they moved to new premises.

Edit: this building is now demolished as of 2024.

Continuing east for a while we crossed into the wooded area around the Hilsea Lines defences, locally known as Foxes Forest and because this is Portsmouth that’s most likely because someone realised there were no foxes anywhere near it and it would make a good addition to the list of disinformative place names in the city. This quiet, pleasant area that you absolutely don’t want to be anywhere near after dark – rumours of gangs of roaming tramps and drug-addled teenagers and ghosts of Victorian thieves (okay, maybe not that one) abound – is just north of the brewery that was our destination on this walk.

We picked up our order of beers and ciders from Urban Island, had a pleasant chat with Guy and Hayley, the owners, then did an about-turn and began the return leg of our gentle exercise.

Taking a slightly different path along Hilsea Lagoon we were able to get up much closer to the wakeboarding taking place there and get a whole new set of photos to bore the living crap out of you. With the steep banks of the bastions behind us we were also able to enjoy the shade for a while too which was quite a relief as it was decidedly warmer than we’d expected even allowing for our general levels of unfitness and intolerance for heat.

With our appetite for watching the wakeboarding in Hilsea sated we headed back to North End, down the southern arm of the lagoon and then onto the footpath leading towards Alexandra Park once more. Photos taken were fewer in number now and I concentrated on the wildflowers in particular. We’re fond of wildflower-planting as it’s our plan for part of our garden too. Not only is it good for nature, it’s also incredibly lazy because it requires little or no tending. Laziness appeals.

So, an enjoyable walk with some attractive views – possibly more so when the tide is in a bit – and, allowing for plenty of stops for photography as well as watching the wakeboarders jumping and splashing out on the lagoon and chatting with the brewers, we ended up averaging a little under four kilometres per hour walking pace. That’s just above the pace of mountain erosion or the natural speed of a brick pushed along a tarmac road by a light breeze. Close to three hours, a lot of it in the sun, and, yes, we got burnt a smidge. Still, it was nice to be out and we can recommend the picturesque Portsmouth walking route if you want to get some steps under your belt.