Doing the Portsmouth Walk

So the battlement whose name we have through a team effort recalled is The Hard, is it turns out named in a rather uncompromising yet descriptive way. It's made of concrete, which makes it hard, and I suppose it must be hard to hold back the sea. There was a staircase that looked as though it would be hard to climb.

It was quiet on one side, then through the arch, on the beach, waves on shingle and wind off the sea; the occasional hovercraft. We wished we had gone on a hovercraft. That would have been a real adventure.

Lyra had fallen asleep on the walk so I tended the stroller while the others climbed the steep-looking staircase and promenaded along the Hard Top, the mysteries of which were hidden from little me, sitting down below on a bench in an arch in the shade from the sun and the wind.

Anne insisted that I should go for my walk along the top and at first I wasn't sure that I could really see the attraction but when I got up there it was quite an interesting spot, full of pictures to be taken - many of them rubbish, maybe some of them nice. There were benches, wavy like the sea. That's clever I thought but maybe not really clever enough. Tall lamppost reminiscent of the Spinnaker. Interesting stony textures.

Down on the other side, a shady terrace; the appalling architecture of which really made it unworthy of the name; more a concrete shed without any walls but a few more benches with attractive lights overhead to add a little atmosphere to those twilight encounters that I imagine would happen in such dark recesses after dark in a secluded cranny such as this.

Ahead, the beach, a few people on it. some of them young sunbathers, some of them older specimens. I met up with the others and Eloise and Lyra attempted to throw stones at the sea for a while. Eloise managed to hit it a couple of times.

We followed the Millennium Walk back towards whatever the big shopping centre we'd been at was called, following the route around some dockyards and a couple of pubs and restaurants. It was kind of quaint and picturesque in a sort of people-live-here-now-but-in-the-olden-days-it-used-to-be-grim-and-dirty kind of way.

And that was that; we hopped back onto the Catameringue (sic) and headed back across the Solent to our next appointment.