HMS Warrior

Proud member of the National Historic Fleet at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

University shopping was the order of the day! Willow came over last night to stay & what a delight it is to see him. His final uni choices have to be in very soon, & Portsmouth was one he hadn't been to see yet. What to do today therefore was quite a simple one.

We had lazy-ish morning & then piling in the car, made our merry way along the coast, along the beautiful green country flanked roads to the sunny seaside. It was a glorious day (to begin with), we took a tour of the various questionable parts of the city in search of the university buildings, en route to Gunwharf Quays, where after watching some children zorbing (attempting to anyway) & staring at the Spinnaker Tower for a short while, we had a tasty lunch overlooking the harbour. It then began to rain quite heavily & so we decided to potter around the shopping outlet before heading for the main attraction - that's right, you guessed it - the cinema, to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - what else are we to do when checking out the uni!? A super, action packed, heart-felt Marvel film. But salty popcorn - eurgh! I could have drank a bucket of anything to wash that down.

On our release, the rain has just about passed & it was unfortunately time to leave. We did swing by the university library & union before we left town, & I think Will got a good vibe of the city in our short day here. Mission accomplished.

I had wanted to see the Historic Dockyard throughout the entire day & I got my wish as the sun was beginning to set. Launched in 1860 by the Royal Navy, along with her sister ship HMS Black Prince, she was the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warship, built in response to the French's first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire.

Cool, uh!?