The Beautiful South
If you’ve been following the UrbanVox HQ you will know that our household is no stranger to Portsmouth.
Portsmouth itself, holds a special place in our heart: it was where the wife and I first met (in real life, that is… We’d been following each other’s blogs and exchanged emails and talked on ICQ for about a month or so before that). That first day we shopped in town and walked out to Gunwharf Quays late afternoon. Our first flat was in Portsmouth(Well Fratton) and we frequently visited Gunwharf and loved the Victorian Christmas festival. It was also in Portsmouth that I popped the big question(or tried as she managed to find the ring while I was cooking a special dinner during which I was planning to propose) and it was there that we got Married.
So it was a pleasure to be recruited by Have a Lovely Time to go and write a review on the new Family Fun in the Beautiful South campaign of Tourism South East.
We were supposed to meet up and start the day with some nice Brunch at the HMS Warrior in anticipation for the day ahead. However we got a bit delayed… Still had some time to grab a croissant and a cup of coffee before we got stated so fine start of a day. 
We started in Action Stations, a museum which brings the modern Royal Navy directly to you with an exciting mixture of physical challenges, simulators and technological experiments. There was plenty for kids to try out and help them understand about how little corners of a naval ship works. The upstairs of Action Stations is more scientific where the downstairs is more hands-on, allowing you to try things like shooting helicopters out of the sky (TB and Vic totally thrashed me at the AA machine gun simulators!), pilot a transport helicopter from am Air carrier to a naval base and activities based on a Royal Marines assault course including a giant climbing wall which I am soooo going to go up to next time we visit.
Next we visited the HMS Victory, the ship on which Nelson sailed and died. I should’ve guessed it wouldn’t be easy when we had to leave the buggy outside (there are no locks so don’t forget to take a buggy clip!). Getting on to the ship wasn’t a problem, nor was getting up any of the steps, but getting down again, that was a different matter. Depending on which area of the ship you’re on, the stairs range from steep to might as well be a ladder. Not exactly practical when you’re carrying a baby; I feel for families who’ve got two or more non-or unsteady walkers. Despite the inherent difficulties with traversing centuries old ships, they’re an excellent way of learning about the past. Even TB, with his limited six year old attention span was captivated by the simplest of things. He found it incredible that the place where Lord Nelson fell is actually marked on deck, and decided to do his Nelson impression there and then.
A day out in Portsmouth wouldn’t be complete by only visiting the Historic Dockyards. We wandered over to Gunwharf Quays and went up in the Spinnaker Tower. Soaring 170 metres above Portsmouth Harbour and the Solent, the Spinnaker Tower is taller than the London Eye, Blackpool Tower and Big Ben. In 2003, when the tower was being constructed, The wife worked the 06:00 shift at one of the stores in Gunwharf Quays. In the mornings, as Vic rode my bike to work, roads would be closed to accomodate double-length lorries transporting pieces for the Tower. If it hadn’t been so early in the morning, Portsmouth would have been in chaos, and it didn’t surprise me on our return to the UK in 2004 that the Tower still hadn’t been completed. The Spinnaker Tower opened in 2005 and its high-speed lift sends you up to the viewing towers at 4 metres per second taking only 28 seconds to reach the top of the shaft – just a little scary.
Did I ever Tell you I am afraid of Heights???
Of course if you really want scary, you could try walking across the glass floor on View Deck. At 100 metres high it’s certainly a drop to the ground below. If views across the land are more your thing, you can see for up to 23 miles around 350° of the Tower. If your day out isn’t quite as sunny as ours was, you could always invoke the Tower’s view guarantee. If you can’t see the 3 Solent forts on the day of your visit, the Tower will issue each member of your party with a ticket to return for free within three months.
There’s always something going on at Gunwharf Quays and until 29 August, unlike the rest of Portsmouth, Gunwharf has a sandy beach complete with traditional Carribean food and drink vendors and a steel band. There’s more than enough to keep your kids occupied whilst your other half watches them and you go off to sample the events. TB was lucky enough to go on the water walkers, or hamster balls as he called them – I really wanted to try them but aparently I am too big for them… so I would settle just to go and try the Scuba Diving Tank and the kayaks available for rent at the marina.
And if, like us, you can’t be bothered to cook after your packed day out, there’s more than enough places to eat at Gunwharf. We rocked up to Chiquitos as TB wanted fajitas, but having regularly visited over half the bars and restaurants at the Quays both the wife and I can safely say there are no bad ones.
We left the Gunwharf Quays as the Clubbing Crowd arrived to take the stage in one of the venues located there. We felt just a little old but quickly forgot about it as a fabulous sunset came to say goodbye just before we sped up the A3 on our way back home.
If you would like to go and try some of what Portsmouth has to offer, next week we will be running a giveaway here and at Glowstars and the winners will come and enjoy a VIP evening at the best table in the house at Highlights, the Number One venue for stand up comedy in Portsmouth followed up by dancing de night away in the aftershow party until 2am. More details will be published later this week as we are still sorting a few details before announcing rules and dates and the full prize… so stay tuned to the UrbanVox HQ and Glowstars for more details. 
*Have A Lovely Time and Tourism South East arranged and funded the day’s events as part of their ‘Beautiful South’ campaign
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How lovely to find out how you met! Looks like a great day out, I love a nice museum…
zooarchaeologist´s last [type] ..Competition Winners Bring It On- Baby by Zoe Williams
O yeah! it was a great day out… and it is so much more than a museum, if you are really into naval history etc etc you couldn;t fit the whole thin in one day…