Look, before you get defensive about this description of Lee-on-Solent I need to make it clear that dark and depressing seaside places are firm favourites with us. Plus, the following photographs were taken in February 2011. Everywhere in England looks dirty, dismal, and distressed in February in England.
A second thing to bring up here as well is that technically this place is called Lee-on-the-Solent but I don’t know anyone around this part of the world we live in who calls it that. We haven’t got time to throw definite articles into the middle of place names like that.
So, the following pictures come from a short stop here over fourteen years ago as I write this now. Why did we visit this coastal part of Hampshire? You’ll have to jump into a time machine and go ask Past Me about that because Present Me doesn’t know for sure. Maybe we’d hit Fareham’s shops and decided to go exploring instead of heading straight back to Portsmouth. I just can’t remember. However, we did go through a phase of parking up along beaches all around England and taking in some sea air so it’s not even out of the question that we headed here on purpose as the only thing to do on that day. It was a Monday, straight after Super Bowl the night before, so we would have had the day off work and likely feeling a little jaded after an early hours of the morning finish.
There was a lot of barbed wire fencing around properties on our walk. Were the people of Lee-on-Solent all untrustworthy criminals? Are they still all untrustworthy criminals? Or was the fencing to stop whatever was inside from getting out?
Some of that fencing was to stop anyone from apparently stealing a hovercraft from the Hovercraft Museum. You’d be surprised how many elaborate heists involve the use of hovercrafts and why it’s important that security is top quality around establishments like this.
Actually, that Hovercraft Museum looks cool. We’ll have to head back to Lee-on-Solent one day when it’s open and have a proper look around.
Very interesting to look back at the photos now and see Tux, the brand identity penguin for Linux on a café sign. Looking through Google Maps snapshots it looks like they finally changed this between 2017 and 2018, possibly after someone questioned them as to whether they had officially followed the licencing rules for use of it.
