Portsmouth and Brighton

Headed off to Portsmouth early before we had to start feeding the parking meters again. Thought that we were going to have trouble parking in Portsmouth too, but the new carpark in the historical harbour area was almost empty, and it was only a short stroll to the dockyards so we couldn't have it any better.

Wandered around the historical yards and looked at HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship, the complexity of which boggled the imagination. For example, it took a crew of 100 to winch the anchor up when they wanted to set sail, a process which took up to 6 hours to complete. There are over 900 blocks and 2 kilometers of rope to rig the ship, and at the Battle of Trafalgar there were over 800 crew on board.

Saw the rest of the ships, although Henry VIII's flagship, the Mary Rose is being restored and wasn't viewable, then joined a walking tour of the dockyards. Well, actually 'joined' is the wrong word - we were the tour group. The guide was young and enthusiastic, and proudly showed us everything for the next hour.

Wandered down to the adjacent redeveloped dockyards (every city has one) and enjoyed Nandos for lunch, though the staff couldn't quite believe that Australia had lots of Nandos. Maybe the chain is new here.

After lunch and a look at the Spinnaker Tower, we beetled on down to Brighton for the afternoon. Took the 'Park and Ride' into the city which was a good decision, wandered along the beach front, walked on the pebbled beach, then out along the Brighton Pier. After a look around we grabbed a couple of deck chairs on the pier and dozed away the afternoon in the sun to the smell of Belgian waffles and the sounds of merry-go-round music.

Late afternoon we returned to the car and headed off to Haywards Heath and Torben and Mette Brink's house. Their daughter Maya used to be in Mandy's grade, and they've kindly offered to put us up for a few days.