Going to Southampton to look at a boat.

 It was payday and I was itching to get out of the house and out of Pompey. I hadn't been anywhere interesting for a while and fancied doing something new.  

 People with more money might hop on a flight to Antigua or take off to London to hit the theatre district or wherever.  Me? I was going to pop over to Southampton to look at a boat.

  Southampton has plenty of boats and ships to choose from but what made this one different was that it was firmly inland. More on that in a minute. 

 The weather a was a gorgeous, sunny day so that was good, at least until I got out of Southampton rail station  and into direct sunlight. This is where I realised that jeans and a black t-shirt is not great for scorching hot days, especially if you're a middle-aged couch potato who avoids sunlight and exercise. 

  Some hot, damp, sweaty trudging later I found my way to the bottom end of Western Esplanade and turned right to follow the old, stone city walls.  There it was, the reason for this trip.

 So what you're looking at right now is a replica of a medieval "keel" merchant ship  built 1997ish by local Maritime Skills Centre manager  Alex Ward and refurbished in 2017. (Daily Echo article) 
 If I understand it right, the wall on the right used to be the quayside city walls which were put up after a visit from French and Genoese in 1338 left things in a proper mess. (More about that HERE)

Since there wasn't a fence around it, or a big sign saying "Keep off" I took the opportunity  to climb aboard.

 
  At this point a family walked past and one of the children loudly asked if they could get in the boat, to which the mother loudly responded "No, you're not supposed be on that.." while glaring at me.  I didn't case. I was on a boat and she wasn't. 

By this point I'd explored all the options the boat could offer.  There was another point of interest just up the road though. After a landbound ship, we had a landbound lighthouse. 

 There's a chain of them all along the high street and beyond. 

The next place on my itinerary was the Tudor House museum. 

I didn't have too much trouble working out which of the local buildings it was. 

 Bigger than I was expecting too. 

The building itself was nice and out the back they had a small but interesting garden as well as some Tudor era fortifications. 

 A nice little fountain in one corner

 Plants. Don't ask me what, I am no gardener.

Pretty though

 Looking back at the garden from a stretch of wall. 

  After that I slogged off to the town centre in search of comics and a cold drink. Oh dear gods, I really, really needed that cold drink. Hot weather and me do not get along. 

 I did take a couple of snaps of the tower at the city centre end though. I do like that sort of thing. 

  

 It's weird how this is right next to a big, modern complex made of glass and concrete.  The world has a place for both but I know which one I wanted to take a picture of. 

 One rampage around Southampton's bookshops later I was on my way home with a bag of books, sore feet and mild heatstroke. All worth it for a jaunt away from the same old, same old.  

 I will leave you with a photo I took of some graffiti at Pompey's Hard, outside the bus station.

 I can't disagree. 

  That's all folks. 

Visiting The Wight Military Heritage Museum

 I love a good museum, me.

  I'm particularly keen on military or aviation museums and after doing most of the ones in Portsmouth and Southampton, I fancied doing something a bit further afield.  

  Then I found out about the Wight Military & Heritage Museum just outside Cowes and promptly put it on my list of places to see. 

Well, after several years, this weekend I finally got around to it.  Naturally I managed to pick a day when it was frigging raining.

  You don't need to know about how I got to the museum but I will say that the most awkward part of the journey wasn't getting to the island, it was finding the damn bus-stop in Cowes.

  I also managed to miss the stop for the museum so had to do some trudging back down the road.  Damp trudging, because as mentioned earlier, it was raining. 

Anyway, I finally got there and the first thing I saw made it all worthwhile because sat outside was this:

 A Conqueror heavy tank

 I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Conqueror. It was supposed to be some extra firepower to help the Centurions deal with oncoming Soviet armour. Luckily it never came to that. 

  Also, my dad drove one of these as a target tank. He told me once that they had a card table set up inside.  Make of that what you will.

 

The entrance and just next to it, a shed with books in it. 

 And why not?

 Once past reception and inevitable gift shop I moved on to a display of weapons: cases with assorted rifles, machineguns and other small arms.

Next up: a chicken. 

 Well it did say this was a military & heritage museum.

After another display of WW2 home front stuff set up as shop-fronts I got into the good stuff. 

 A French truck/ambulance from the Indo-China war. 

An absolute behemoth of a truck. A WW2 Scammell.

According to the volunteer I got chatting to, after the war a lot of these ended up working for fairgrounds. It also took a lot of time, effort and money to get this one back into working conditions.

 An Abbot Self-propelled gun.

 

 There was an option to sit in the drivers seat after a small donation but after climbing on-board I quickly realised that there was  no way I was going to fit into the driver's compartment and even assuming I managed it, I sure as hell wasn't getting back out again without a crowbar, a gallon of grease and some personal injury.  I settled for sitting on top of it which is still cool enough. 

After that we get something rare:

 

 This is an experimental mounting for four Polsten 20mm cannon which was tested on the island but never went into production. 

  See that door behind it? That's where we are going next.  

The next room had a collection of cool stuff including an ongoing rebuild on a Britten-Norman Islander

Plus a Saracen APC

They had some other AFVs and guns but the pictures didn't come out that well so here's a squaddie tea set.

 The British Army has always understood the value of a good cuppa. 

Hmm, I thought I wonder if there's anything outside. 

Yes, there was.  A Centurion AVRE for starters. Which my dad also drove. 

That's a big gun isn't it?

There was also a Centurion Recovery vehicle.

 

And something rare, if a bit knocked about. A prototype Centurion SP Gun.  According to the volunteer, they fitted it with a 5 inch gun but unfortunately the recoil was too strong and it kept breaking itself.

Now while I was poking about outside , I couldn't help noticing some other vehicles a little further away.  Or wrecks, rather.

 I'm not sure if I was supposed to go take a closer look but in lieu of any big red signs reading "No" I wandered over.

Jackpot. hat I found were he remains of two Conqueror recovery tanks and a conqueror gun tank, looking very forlorn but still striking.

All of which did leave me feeling a bit sad that the poor things were in such a state but at least I got to see them.

 Finally I set off back to West Cowes but did pause long enough for a selfie!

And that was the Wight Military & Heritage museum. Did I get wet? Yes.  Did I have to put a bit of effort in to get there? Yes.  

Was it worth it? Oh very much yes.

I didn't post all the pics I took so there's more to see than what I showed you.

A big thanks to the staff at the museum who were very pleasant indeed.

That's all folks. 

Portsmouth Naval Museum Pt 4

Hello again. 

To finish up my brief look at the Portsmouth Dockyard Naval Museum hee's a few random pictures i took in the actual museum itself. 

  The Naval Museum is spread across two different buildings, both dating from the 18th Century. Naturally the life of Admiral Nelson and the battle of Trafalgar feature heavily in the first part with subsequent  displays devoted to the Navy experience in the 19th Century through to modern times.  It really is impressive and definitely worth a look if you're in the area.. 

I think it probably says a lot about me that I only chose to snap certain things I thought were "cool".   

 Although the artist was clearly a master craftsman, my immediate reaction to this figurehead was "He's wondering how to cover his junk when he's only got a silk scarf to work with."

Figureheads really need to make a comeback.  

Meanwhile this saucy miss doesn't seem at all bothered by her wardrobe malfunction. 

Snarking aside, the carving and expressions on both of these are delightful.

It's like somebody looked at the Classical statues in the British Museum and thought "I can do that...but much less formal."

Over in the other building I was fascinated by this:

The guide says this is the gun that fired the first Royal Navy shot in WW1 when the destroyer HMS Lance

ran into the Imperial German minelayer Konigin Louise.  

After a brief scrap Lance and her consort HMS Landrall 

put the German ship down, the first of many ships to find a 

cold, lonely home on the seabed over the next five years. 

More here: The museum article on this gun.

That's a sophisticated bit of technology considering that the Navy had been using cast-iron muzzle loaders only 50 years before. 

Note how little protection there is for the crew. 

They were more cold-blooded times, I feel. 

A collection of promotional posters.

Finally I took some pics of another model

This is an aircraft carrier from... somepoint in the 1950s I think. 

 Th selection of aircraft is interesting, being a mix of WW2 designs and more recent turboporops with jets yet to make their appearance. 

At the back you have Fireflies and Gannets, with AEW Skyraiders and Wyverns ranged forward and a couple of choppers standing by. 

The carrier itself - and I have no idea which one she is - is practically unchanged from WW2 with a full suite of AA guns 

and before the RN saved a lot of pilot lives by introducing the angled flight deck, among other innovations. 

The best part is, if you press a button underneath the radar starts rotating. 

I happily spent ten minutes at a time studying all the models they had here, and over at the Jutland exhibition. 

Geek that I am, that's my kind of fun day out.  

Anyway, I'll get back to posting metal and underclad women soon. 

I might even get some film reviews up. 

That's all folks. 

Portsmouth Naval Museum Pt 3

Evening all.

This is the very much delayed third part of my photo record of a trip to Portsmouth Naval Museum. 

In this part I get to visit another of the Dockyard's attractions I've been hankering after for a long, long time. 

HMS M.33, also known later as HMS Minerva, was built as a Monitor during WW1. This was a new class of warship designed to bombard enemy shore positions from the shallows while being cheap and much more expendable than the valuable battleships and cruisers which were needed elsewhere. While some monitors were built to house spare battleship guns that happened to be lying around  M33 and her sisters were much more modest, housing a brace of 6" guns. After service at Gallipolli and during the British intervention in North Russia in the Civil War she was refitted as a minelayer before being hulked at the start of WW2.

After several years of restoration M33 was finally given a  snazzy coat of paint and a new home in a drydock next to HMS Victory. 

Now we're up to speed, time for some photos. Starting with the RN's newest and coolest ship.

 I have to admit that the Queen Elizabeth looks very striking and has the sort of presence that's rare these days. Currently top of my list of things I want to visit one day.  

Interestingly I have a book from the 1970s which talks about the new carriers which the RN was hoping to get - sadly cancelled - and the design has that same two-island layout.


By contrast with the high tech marvel over the way, the little M33 is very much a no-frills kind of ship.

 

The only thing remotely electronic on this whole ship is the radio

The crew quarters are minimalist as well.

This is where the ordinary matelots lived and slept.

Note that there's stuff all in the way of ventilation.

Now imagine being in this metal box on a scorching hot Turkish night with water in short supply.

This is an officers cabin. 

These days it would be considered unsuitable for a ship's brig.

What you can't really see from these pics is how crudely the whole thing was put together.  

M33 is all bolted plates and sharp corners. A cheap ship, built quickly because it was needed in a hurry. 

Here's the ships galley.

A somewhat restricted diet was on offer, I suspect. 

No wonder the matelots looked forward to their rum tot so much. 

They were a a hardy lot back in them days, weren't they? 

The M33 is well worth a look if you get chance. 

Not only is it the only remaining example of a Monitor and Gallipolli veteran 

but it's a really great example of the sort of small, utilitarian ship that 

served the RN well in both World Wars. 

Stay tuned for part 4.