Staycation, day 8

Out today to Portsmouth to visit Barbara and Alan in the PM. To make something more out of the short hop eastwards, we stopped off along the way in Portchester. Though it's hardly a fair way to judge a city and its surrounds, because of Portsmouth's relatively high population density, I've always tended to write-off anything within spitting distance of it. Including the across-the-water Portchester. How wrong could I have been?


Very, as it turns out. Though the town itself is not a whole lot to write home about (or even write blog about), it's got a great seafront, which includes the excellent Portchester Castle. The map above shows the short (5.3 km) walk that we did around and through it.


This shot shows the most intact part of the castle, its keep (in the NW corner of the map), but the remainder is in pretty fair shape too, at least relative to more tumbledown affairs like St. Andrews. Including some great walls. The castle grounds also include a church, St. Marys, and both external and internal moats (the latter around the keep).


As the above panorama hopefully shows, the castle also affords great sea views over to Portsmouth itself. Seen from this distance the city actually looks appealing! ;-)

Anyway, a pleasingly surprising trip out east. And another great day for it - the weather could not have been better (cf. the deep blue sky above). And followed up with a nice catch-up in Portsmouth itself. In particular, Alan was in great form.

More photos over at Flickr.