Hayling Island

We made it to bed just before midnight and were all up and about by 8:30am. The bedroom is on the ground floor so that the main floor, upstairs, gets a sea view.  The bedroom is very small and I was worried that being on the ground floor near the main road would keep me awake but the sound of the sea sent me to sleep really quickly. 

Even on a cold, grey winter morning having a sea view is very good for the soul.  We tried to take a ride on the little Hayling Island railway that runs up and down the seafront but some of the line is flooded due to the high spring tide and so we don’t get to ride. We did take a look around the gift shop and I ended up with a couple of Christmas presents. 

Instead of taking the train we walked parallel to the sea and went to an amusement arcade near the Funland park. Sadly, the outdoor rides at Funland were closed but the 2p pushers were fun. I am not sure how much we missed. We stopped for coffee at a lovely little tea shop, The Mad Hatters Tea Room. It was quite busy and we needed to sit outside for a while until a table came free. When it did, and we were settled, we decided to have lunch. The creamy mushrooms on  Ciabatta was delicious. PY paid for us all and the bill was less than £10 per head.

After eating, we split up. The others went back to the apartment. PY and I planned to walk to The Inn on the Beach where we stopped, with a view of the kite surfers on the beach, for a glass of wine. Afterwards, we decided to walk onwards to the little ferry point. There is a passenger ferry that connects Hayling Island to Portsmouth Island and, although we knew it wasn’t running today, we thought we’d take a look. It was a lovely walk in spite of the cold. There was a little nature reserve on the way which we would explore if we came this way again. 

Before heading to the pub next door, we spent the late afternoon in the apartment where Phil had put in Magic Radio which has already gone 100% Christmas. I wonder if I will still be thinking these are ‘’more of the songs you love” if I listen to  this for the next month?  

The Olive Leaf is small and has a area for the pub and sperate one for those eating. The Argentina-Mexico World Cup match was on but it didn’t look like a lot of people were watching. I think I was the only one to go for three courses, of which the French Onion Soup was the most delicious (but I don’t have it very often because it’s not on a lot of menus and that probably makes me a bit biased). A really nice evening.