CYHA News

The Land of Snow and Ice

It turns out that this winter had a bit of a sting in its tail. At the end of February we were visited by the famous “Beast from the East”. Causing school closures and traffic mayhem across the country, it also impacted on the CYHA programme. Although Dave and I braved the snow drifts, it seemed prudent to cancel the planned slide show for an audience unlikely to exceed two. Then, just when all the daffs and crocuses were starting to bloom, mid-March slapped them on the head with another dumping of snow prompting the postponement of our planned Saffron Trail walk. In between times the sun did show its face and our weekend in Portsmouth had the most fantastic blue skies, but boy it was cold!

Friday night saw us pull up at the Ibis Budget Hotel in Fratton. Close to the football stadium, it’s probably fair to say this wasn’t the most salubrious part of Portsmouth. However the staff were friendly and the rooms were nice so it made the perfect base camp for exploring the harbour front area.

There wasn’t a huge choice of Friday night eateries in Fratton. Owing to the infamous ‘no chicken’ scandal, the local KFC had no queues. We checked and they definitely did have chicken, but no milk for tea. I can only assume it was a no tea revolt that led to the four officer take down of one of the other customers whilst Dave and I were enjoying our nuggets. To recover from the excitement we joined Steve down the road at ‘Spoons for a couple of beers before bed time.

The Historic Dockyard is packed with stuff to see and most of it is outside in the teeth of a blast from the arctic. Brrr! Chronologically you would start with the Mary Rose from 1545. Now housed in a state-of-the-art museum, the exhibit includes not only the skeleton of the old warship, but a huge number of artefacts from the wreck. This enabled them to paint a vivid picture of what it was like to serve on a Tudor warship. There seemed to be a lot of guys with bad backs, but the most impressive thing had to be the 400 litre cooking cauldrons – what CYHA could do with one of those!

Step forward to 1805 and you have HMS Victory - a veteran of the battle of Trafalgar and the age of sail, and also the location of Nelson’s last breath. By 1860 they were including engines and washing machines, as evidenced by HMS Warrior – still largely wooden, but ironclad. You get to 1915 and HMS M33 shows you the steel hulled technology they had at the battle of Gallipoli. If you had time after viewing all the exhibits above the waterline, you could also cross the harbour to the submarine museum. Alongside the relative luxury of the cold war sub, HMS Alliance, was a early sub from the Victorian period. Amongst the essential kit in 1901 were caged mice to test for when they needed to surface and change the air. Luckily we had all weekend to fit this in.

To keep our strength up, Dave P had booked us into a swanky Thai tapas restaurant for our Saturday night meal. This was an excellent choice and their Thai tasting menu meant that we could each try about six different dishes without being unduly stuffed. Although some of us did manage a fair bit of stuffing as well.

The lovely, sunny weather encouraged us to head out of the harbour along The Wall. The fortifications are largely survivors of the sixteenth century and include the huge tower from which a massive chain was hung across the harbour mouth. Many of the structures could be seen in the painting of the battle of the Solent that featured in the Mary Rose exhibition. It’s incredible to think we were walking in the footsteps of those who had witnessed the sinking of the Mary Rose nearly 500 years ago.

Ali