weekend in portsmouth

Reba and I spent a weekend away for our anniversary. It's sort of our 5th and sort of our 10th anniversary. We went on our first date around August 4th (Reba's birthday), and then were married 5 years later on August 24th. So, We just call the 24th our anniversary either way. Reba is way into boats, particularly the famous British 18th and 19th century boats like the Endurance, Victory, etc. So, we went to Portsmouth for the weekend to see the ocean and the boats. Portsmouth is where the British have had docks and shipping operations for ~800 years. Lots of famous sailing expeditions have left from Portsmouth harbor, including The Mary Rose on her last voyage, Nelson's ship Victory on it's way to Nelson's death at Trafalgar, and many of the D-Day landing forces.

Reba and HMS Victory

Reba walks onto HMS Victory

This was also the site of the first European dry dock, in the 15th century. Today, there is still some degree of British Naval operations there, but I'm not sure how much. The docks area is mostly given over to preserved ships, museums, etc. The rest of the town seems like sort of a weekend getaway for Britons in the summer. There's a big promenade along the shore, complete with cheesy fun parks, etc. A cab driver told us, rather gleefully, that the promenade and close by parks were cleared in WW2 for use as a "killing field" if enemy forces invaded. We spent the whole weekend taking walks and going through museums. Super cool! Here are some old ship figureheads we found... some of them are pretty goofy.

Probably the coolest thing going in Portsmouth is the Mary Rose, which was a ship in Henry VIII's navy. Basically, this was a big warship of the day, and during a battle just off of Portsmouth, it fired it's guns, and turned sharply to fire again at the same time a breeze came up. Bad idea + bad luck. This pushed the boat over further than the turn normally would have, and flooded the lower gun ports, which were still open from the firing. Water rushed in, and this heavy boat sank like a rock. It landed on it's side on the ocean floor, where the "up" side rotted away. The "down" side was buried in silt for almost 500 years when British archaeologists found and excavated it. They built a special metal frame to raise the half that had been buried, and now, it's sitting upright in a special built room in the Portsmouth dockyards, where it is continuously sprayed with a wax like compound. This is to preserve the wood, and has been going on constantly since the 1980s. In a few years, they will start to dry the boat out so it and it's artifacts can be housed in a special new museum. A lot of the artifacts are of everyday materials, and it's pretty amazing to see shirts and shoes, medical instruments, cooking gear, etc. from 500 years ago. Some of the artifacts are the only surviving pieces of their kind in the world. The fact that half of the boat is rotten away makes it kind of a neat museum piece because you get to see a cross section of all the decks. Neat!

Mary Rose getting the wax treatment

We splurged and went to a nice dinner the last night, at a place called Lemon Sole, which is a specialty fish restaurant. I ate Dover Sole, which is pretty darn good. Reba had an Australian fish called a Baramundi... not really my fave, but kind of neat because they grown them in local farms. It was a nice little dinner, and we went to their downstairs bar after for some wine.

Lemon Sole, quaint!

ain't she cute?

We had a nice train ride back to Oxford on Sunday. I actually really like riding a train through the countryside on a warm, pretty day. England is such a pleasant place in summer. :)

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