The Solent Way: Part 2

Hamble to Portsmouth (14 miles)

After deciding that it was too nice a weekend to waste indoors, I set out on the Solent Way again.  Continuing down the eastern side of Southampton Water, this stage will take us from where we finished last time in Hamble right into the city of Portsmouth.  Having prepared a packed lunch, I was duly down at the station at 9.45 to catch the slow train a few stops down the line to Hamble.

Hamble station (Street View) has the charming attribute of being in the middle of a field.  It's pretty basic, to be honest, just a pair of concrete platforms and a ticket machine next to the road bridge leading into the village. This will mean I have to walk about a mile to reach the quayside and pick up the Solent Way, but I don't particularly mind as there's enough of interest along the main street.  Hamble has plenty of history before new-money sailing businesses came along, and was for most of the last century an important area in the development of aviation. There were not one, but two, airfields in the town; one which just about clings on as a plant for General Electric aviation, and another which is buried under an 80's up-market housing estate.  There's plenty of evidence about though, firstly the Folland Gnat replica serving as a gate guard to the GE site, then further on some information panels with pictorial histories of the various planes and seaplanes built and tested here, and finally a silver miniature Spitfire mounted on swoopy poles as if turning a steep bank over the road.

The rest of the architecture bar the church is typical Georgian brick houses lining the steep lane down to the water (Street View).  The town of Hamble today (or, properly, Hamble-le-Rice, (Street View)) is largely concerned with the construction, maintenance and excise of boats and their accessories.  All kinds, although on the basis of the many vessels moored in the river, it's mostly private yachts that are most at home here. The Hamble River is only about half a mile from ending its modest course into the Solent, so it's fairly deep and allows a convenient base from which to launch one's forty-foot status symbol for a jaunt around the island.  Appropriately enough, I'm heading for a boat trip right now, but not one involving hoisting sails or leaning backwards over the side.  Instead I'm going to take one of the non-walking bits of the Solent Way, the ferry.

On the Hamble-Warsash ferry

I like the Hamble-Warsash ferry. It has a pleasing feeling of being a service rather than just a business enterprise.  To reach it you have to go down onto a gated jetty which looks a tiny bit not-public (with walking boots and a bag I got a funny look from four muscular waterproofed blokes leaving the pontoon), step onto the ferry via an ungated 'people scoop' opening at the front, and give the ferryman £1.50. The boat is pink (apart from the rusty bits) whereas the last time I rode on it, which must have been at least fifteen years ago, it was a more sober white. The captain, though, looks like a real proper sailor in the Captain Birdseye vein, with a white beard, an Arran sweater and a nautical cap. I am the only passenger and he sets off immediately I am aboard.  The passage across the river takes about five minutes, although this is variable depending on the number of yachts gong down the main channel rather than across it, and the number of parked boats it is necessary to weave through, including another similarly pink vessel used for dredging (according to the sign painted on the side). We seem to come alarmingly close to many of them, but the captain's been doing this since he was in short trousers and with a deft hand steers the Emily across the deep water channel and up to a jetty on the Warsash side without anything unfortunate involving anchor cables and the propeller.  There's quite a crowd gathered over here, Saturday traffic clearly being enough to justify getting out the largest vessel in the fleet, with the patronage mostly consisting of families returning from a stroll or dog-walking.  At the end of the jetty is a charming little ferry shelter (also in pink), with a confusing notice informing passengers they'd be better off not using it but instead waiting at the end of jetty, just so the ferryman can be sure they actually want the boat and aren't just resting their legs.

The Hamble River

Off the ferry, the trail goes down a shallow slope to the small quayside at Warsash (Street View). There's a nice pub here as well as a monument noting the area's involvement with D-Day in 1944 - in fact the first of several I'll pass on this walk.  A bit further on at the mouth of the Hamble River is the College of Maritime Studies, with its distinctive jetty and practice scaffold full of orange lifeboats extending out from the land. There's a salt marsh a little way inland, Hook Lake, which looks very tranquil. By contrast, the Solent is buzzing, with ferries, container ships, yachts, jet-skis and freighters punting up and down on voyages of various distances.  Fawley once again looms large across the water, although as I move on the flare stack will become a useful marker to determine how far I've come.  It's a warm day, with a breeze just strong enough to cool without being a problem.

Appropriately enough to lead on from the last paragraph, the next feature we come to is the Solent Breezes holiday park. The Solent Way used to follow the shoreline across the front of the static caravans, but that's not the case now because a lot of the shoreline isn't there any more. It's a cliff top, you see, and cliff tops have a habit of getting undercut by the waves and falling into the water, such that the trailers with the best view are now the ones most in danger of disappearing over it. The authorities realised that it was probably sensible to take walkers somewhere else than over a crumbling bit of sandstone, so there's now a detour round the back of the caravans and past a National Grid transformer station to join the rest of the cliffs which are holding up a bit better. You can still get through the bushes where the path would originally have come out, and see just how precarious it is.  Whilst the caravans are still at a safe distance, for now, there's at least one section of fence which hasn't long for this world.

Carrying on along the cliff-top, the view of the surrounding landscape becomes notably more expansive. The Isle of Wight's quite clearly outlined even in today's hazy air, a reminder that I'm reaching the point where the shoreline starts to turn to meet up with the English Channel.  Across the water the New Forest gradually recedes as the estuary widens away from the drum of Calshot castle perched at the end of its eponymous spit.  From this point onwards I start to scan the eastward horizon periodically for an important landmark indicating journey's end - the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth. No sign yet, but sooner or later the slender white spire will appear in the distance. After a mile or two, the path descends past a small beach, goes up another modest hillock and then becomes flat again at sea level and a row of small buildings appears. They're technically beach chalets, but most are half-way to being proper bungalows, with double-glazed verandas, solar panels or wind turbines for power (not in short supply here) and most with an upturned dinghy outside.  I join the various hand-holding couples, surfers, kite-flyers, paddlers and dogs flagrantly ignoring the 'private beach' notice and carry on around the curve of the bay (not missing the opportunity to use a thoughtfully-placed toilet stop) towards Hill Head.  This is another geography that's changed a lot over time, being the mouth of the River Meon. The sandbanks that gave this its original name of Hell Head have been tidied up along with the construction of a harbour and sluice gate for the river channel.  The other way, inland, everything's rather special. The river now ends in a giant reed bed, Tichfield Haven. which means that local twitchers have the chance to spot. It's quite a striking contrast between the colourful harbour behind and the serenity of the brown estuary before.

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All the beach huts here are green, and a few are open with their tenants inside enjoying the weather.  There's still not really a proper beach but this hasn't tempered the availability of watersports, chiefly sailing in small one-man boats and kite-surfing.  I haven't the faintest idea how to sail a dinghy but it looks highly diverting - at least nearly as good as walking. I always wonder whether anybody else is going the same way as me or as far.  It's remarkable, given the reasonable probability that somebody else may be walking a particular stretch of a particular footpath, that one never follows or engages in swapping places with another hiker, the way that you keep up with another car on a motorway.  Clearly everybody must have a sufficiently different pace or timing that no two path-followers run together. I keep stopping to take pictures too, which mixes things up a bit.

Presently there's a village and the Solent Way diverts a little round beach-front properties. The more urban section brings more people to share the footway with and I have to weave around pushchairs, dogs and wobbling teenage scooters. Horse riders hold up the traffic going the other way.  Periodically, an unidentified engine noise from the other side of the embankment is followed by the appearance overhead of a little yellow glider, which nervously turns over the sea and heads back to the landing strip before it runs out of sky. A mile or so further along the shore is the first proper town on this walk, Lee-on-the-Solent.  Lee (Street View) looks like a proper seaside town from the start, with a long straight road parallel to and slightly above the shore, neat grass and conservatively-styled apartments.  In the centre of the town are some nice quasi-Art-Deco shop fronts and a raised promenade area which add to the ambiance.  There used to a be a pier too, although that's long since vanished.  The amusement arcade on the beach front and the car park behind it used to be the terminus of the little-used Lee-on-Solent railway, which was a distinctly unprofitable entity and soldiered on as little more than a parliamentary service until 1931, with six men and a dog on the last passenger train. There's also a slipway, which is handy for the jet-skiers to launch from, although it's size seems to suggest some greater purpose. It's really very large indeed. Mysteriously large - in fact it's big enough to be used a car park. Oh...

Looking through the resulting break in the embankment I realise why. At the top of the slope, across the road, two huge propellers and a cabin with a radar assembly on top tower over a huge white superstructure. There's a sort of drawbridge-like door at the front of this massive machine, on which its name is written: hovercraft.

Several 'air-cushion vehicles' at Lee

I like hovercraft. They have an endearingly eccentric character about them; slightly cobbled-together from unlikely combinations of components like an assorted Lego set, as if nobody has quite worked out how to neaten it all up yet, a mad idea that has not yet realised quite how excessively complicated it has become. They are the only machines I know which have floppy bits as part of the design and make an amazing racket even before they move anywhere. One can only imagine the joy of test-driving  - or more accurately, test-flying - an early model and finding that not only did your bizarre invention actually work, it also went like the clappers on both land and water.  This corner of the military airfield at HMS Daedalus is the world's only Hovercraft Museum and houses seventy different 'air cushion vehicles' of diverse sizes and designs, some in working order, others still under restoration. I particularly like the craft I first spotted, the giant SR.N4 The Princess Margaret, mostly for the four massive propeller towers mounted on top that look like they were just put there to impress, like the tail fins on 1950s American cars.  This is a machine that can carry sixty cars, 170 passengers and still exceed 70mph! - which in 1969 was almost as exciting as putting a space rocket on the moon, especially when the whole project was a British endeavour.  This site is closed to the public most of the time (apart from visits by special arrangement) but there is a poster advertising open days in the forthcoming months.

Much danger lurks at Browndown.

After the crowds (and it really is crowded, everyone's outside this afternoon) of Lee the Solent Way comes up against a sturdy-looking fence and a gate with warning notices, which luckily happens to be open. Sometimes you have to divert around the next two miles, for Browndown is an irregularly-used military range, although they no longer use live fire here. The landscape is lonely and bleak in the extreme. Civilisation, houses and streets and yachts are not far away at all, yet all are hidden beyond the shingle and the scrubby, arid sandbanks behind. After an indeterminate period of time struggling across the millions of pebbles I come across the ruined remains of some small buildings, not knowing whether they were once complete or whether they were built this way to simulate the effects of bombing and shelling.  The place is entirely a desolate military landscape, parched and barren even when warfare is absent from it.  I imagine this is what it must be like in a nuclear winter; only the stones and the hardiest of grasses survive.  Actually, my pontificating on the desolation of war is some way from the truth: if you know where to look there's life here that you won't find elsewhere precisely because the area is less well-trod: birds, lizards, grasses and algae unique to the Solent coast. It you look a little further, the place offers the first sight of a landmark I'd been looking out for all day: Spinnaker Tower, where I'll end, in the centre of Portsmouth.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to leave and rejoin Stokes Bay on a tarmacked promenade with families and dogs and ice-cream. I pass an old fort which is now a museum of diving: as if to prove this, there are old iron minisubs on plinths outside, slightly rusted and with fogged glass.  A while further on, at the lifeboat station (entirely funded by the local community), the coastguard tractor sits ready to tow a lifeboat out of the water, but clearly nobody needs rescuing right now, firstly as the sea's so calm and secondly because the crew are in a staff meeting, audible through the open shutters.  After this the landscape turns back to grass (again very neat and Windows XP, must be something in this area) and reaches the southernmost point of this walk - indeed, the entire Solent Way this side of Southampton.  It's a location offering a more-than-decent view of Portsmouth, which made it an idea location for defending the city from the French/Spanish/French/Germans/Germans depending on in what period of history it was deemed necessary. To this effect the army built Fort Gilkicker, a curiously-shaped structure which formed part of the chain of brick blockhouses in this area.  In the nineteenth-century a huge earth bank was added to the front which it's possible to climb (I didn't spot the steps until after getting back down on hands and knees and picking up several thorny plants in the process) although you won't see much inside other than the modern radar installation and a lone guard, indifferent to the teenagers on the other side of his fence.

Fort Gilkicker

It's reminder of the importance of the armed forces to this area, chiefly the Navy, but all the services have a presence here and have done for the last few centuries.  The next section of shore is completely taken up with military properties, including the controversial Haslar Immigration Removal Centre and the hospital next door.  Because of this, the Solent Way has to divert and crosses a golf course with the wearily familiar 'Private land - keep on path' notices (which always translate as 'We wish we could prevent you walking right next to our exclusive lawn but legally we can't, so we'll just make you feel as unwelcome as possible'), then some suburban avenues, then a tunnel-like road closed in by the high walls of military barracks and whatever else they have here (Street View).  At the end of the road there's a slender arched bridge (Street View) over Haslar Marina and its thousands of yachts. Over the water is the one military installation you can visit - HMS Alliance, which forms the greater part of the Submarine Museum. After a career sneaking around underwater and subsequently sitting on the quayside it's in need of some restoration work, and looks it too, certainly not the shade of black it started out in.

I've very nearly at the end of my journey but as there's a ferry across the harbour every six minutes there's time for a short detour to get a picture of Holy Trinity Church.  It's an attractive building in dark brick with narrow square tower, more like German or Italian ecclesiastical architecture than the usual British block.  It's also where my trio gave a concert two weeks ago (the whiff of incense is still in the air). Arriving at Gosport waterside there's a magnificent view of Portsmouth in the late afternoon light.  I've never had a chance to ride the Gosport Ferry and am pleased to find it a very efficient way to cross the water (although I wasted half my ticket as they only issue returns). It's by far the best way to enter Portsmouth, what with a superb view of the Spinnaker Tower, HMS Warrior and all the various categories of naval ships and ferries steaming in and out of port. The green and white vessel only requires four minutes to leave Gosport and dock again at the Harbour station, which puts me neatly finishing underneath the tower I'd been using as a guidepost throughout the afternoon.

Panorama of Portsmouth from Gosport

And that's it for now. Suffice to say I returned to Southampton, after waiting 40 minutes to change trains, to find the city in jubilant mood after a 2-0 victory over Doncaster.

The concert

A week ago I had the chance to take part in one of the many Titanic commemorative events taking place around the country. We've already covered how closely linked Southampton is to the ship, so it was quite appropriate that the City of Southampton Orchestra were doing a special concert in the docks.  It was a good one.

We all, orchestra and choir, dutifully arrived at Dock Gate Four on Monday evening for the rehearsal. I'd long wanted to drive past the barriers at the entrance and go inside, so was very pleased to be let through and allowed to drive along the access road to the cruise terminal.  It was a pretty rough night, strong winds and heavy rain heightening the machined, industrial character of the place with everything either floodlit or picked out by small points of light.  This whole area is artificial, concrete deposited into the Solent at the end of the nineteenth century to expand the port, and is imposing rather than picturesque; conceptually united, if we can be generous enough to suggest an artistic element in discussing it, by the fact that most objects are very big.  On the left is the smaller Ocean cruise terminal, whilst ahead to the right rows and rows of Hondas and, in a car park MINIs. After crossing a single track of railway line, a huge diesel locomotive looms up alongside the road, sitting somewhat ominously with its lights on and coupled to a rake of auto-carriers. Cars are a major import here, but there are also giant rolls of cable, dumper trucks and, at the end of the promontory, two huge grain silos.

After driving a good half-mile, I find the venue. The concert to be held in the grand arena of the Queen Elizabeth II cruise terminal, next to which is the exact spot Titanic sailed from and where Cunard liners still depart from to this day.  The building is a bland modern block, which is a particular shame as what preceded it was the wonderful 1950 Ocean Terminal, built in Art Deco style with modern innovations such as power gangways to the ship and conveyor belts for luggage. In an exceptional act of cultural vandalism, Associated British Ports bulldozed the entire structure on inheriting it via privatisation of the docks in 1983. Had it survived, it would actually have made a fantastic venue for the museum if it weren't for the commercial interests of the port keeping the public out. A few rare pictures of it are here.

In fact commercial interest has struck again, as our previously arranged parking spaces inside the terminal had now been grabbed as storage by [German luxury automobile manufacturer*] meaning we have to fight over the space outside. I'm lucky and get Meg about as close as possible to the door outside in the inclement weather. Inside the long shed the first 100 yards is a parking and drop-off area, bedecked with Union flags and about 100 new saloons and coupés, still without registrations and with protective plastic and factory tracking numbers attached.  There must have been close to a million pounds' worth of middle-management tailgating equipment in there.  No time to gawp, as we now have to locate a means of getting up to the departure lounge on the second floor. After fruitlessly trying to find stairs I eventually opt for walking up a static escalator.  My first impression of the concert room is that it's not particularly inspiring. It's basically an airport lounge but with comfier chairs and a lack of marked-up shops. There's a marginal attempt to acknowledge the heritage of the site with reproduction posters of the White Star and Cunard liners, and models of the QE2 and Queen Mary, but this is very much a place that exists for waiting in to go somewhere better. Unlike at the time of the Titanic, or even fifty years later, there's little attempt to dazzle the passengers with luxury from the moment they arrive. It's symbolic of the fact that nowadays, as with flight, cruising and ship travel is a practical rather than a prestige-minded industry.  Expense definitely gets spared in the current climate.

Still, there's a semicircle of chairs for the orchestra and risers for the choir, and the lounge seats have been arranged in quite a lot of rows for an audience of considerable number (we sold out a month ago) so it at least looks like a concert venue. There are some windows on the far side overlooking the water but not much of a view apart from some cranes and the Hythe pier, and the rain hammering away outside and the white of the waves breaking. Incredibly there are more cars parked outside on the quayside, so if you're thinking of buying one bear in mind that it might have been left exposed to the elements on a Southampton dockside for an indefinite period of time. Presently the majority of the orchestra and choir arrive and we begin the rehearsal with Depart...to depart, a new piece which has been specially written for the occasion and will receive its première tomorrow night. The first issue was to turn off the noisy heating system, which took some minutes, in the process of which the fire alarm was set off, quickly being joined in rhythm by the percussion section. About half the choir started to get out quick and had to be called back whilst the rest and the orchestra just laughed and waited for it to be silenced - we were clearly not 'slightly on fire'. 'This is all part of the general 'danger' theme of the concert...' remarked the composer of the first item.  I can't really comment much on what went on for the rest of the evening, suffice to say that we rehearsed the new piece (which I like) for a bit and then moved on the the Sea Symphony (which I liked even more). We had the soloists here tonight, so the plan was basically to run the whole thing and only stop if necessary. The additional noises of the rain, seagulls and particularly the wind whistling through the roof made for a rather atmospheric performance. Out in the gloom ships would roll past the windows, constellations of lights rising and falling together.  I have to say I got more than a flavour of what it must have been like to sail on the Titanic through the dark of the North Atlantic.

Tuesday night was completely different - sunny, a little damp from previous precipitation but bright and the sea calm.  I parked up at about 5.30 at the foot of the grain silos with the rest of the orchestra, and got a few pictures in before anybody security-looking might have seen me and made a fuss.  There was a truly enormous car carrier moored at the other side of the dock, ramp up and ready to depart.

Rehearsal was necessarily brief, as the audience were starting to queue up outside. A female reporter and her cameraman burdened with equipment stayed for a bit to film the orchestra and choir for the evening news.  They got two takes of the opening of A Sea Symphony, which not only gave a flavour of the concert but provided an excellent of shattering the idea that classical music is all quiet.  We top and tail a few bits before there's a tea break. Quick, the punters are coming in.

Practice over, I wolfed down the sandwiches we'd been supplied with for tea and took the cello downstairs, taking great delight in romping the wrong way through the security room unhindered with it. It was time to entertain the crowds with some jolly numbers from the White Star Line Song Book (and Nearer, My God, to Thee).  The 'palm court' was a corner of the room with some trees that almost resembled palms, but not quite well enough.  In fact this hardly mattered as there were plenty of other distractions for the waiting audience; chiefly the bar, but also four giant ship's funnels that had made an appearance at a previous Titanic-related concert; costumed actors and actresses and us palm court musicians ourselves - when the trombonist arrived and we could start, that is.  The conductor gave my arrangements of I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside and The Glow-Worm (no, I didn't think many of you would remember that one) several outings, interspersed with other bits and bobs he'd arranged from the WSLSB, which made the now-arrived trombonist jolly pleased as he could have multiple goes at the duuur-uuur-ur! glissando I'd written.

Thirty minutes later we all run back upstairs to do the rest of the concert.  It's a full house: we sold out a month in advance.  Our conductor, John, enters the podium and allows Ian to introduce his piece Depart...to depart, with an explanation of all the different songs from the different classes of the ship he's based the piece around, as well as the sounds of the Titanic's whistle and machinery and other parts of the ship depicted in the music.  I rather like it actually, and we give a good account of the dots for ten minutes or so.  After the applause there's some faff time whilst the choir come on, which a chunk of the audience take as a cue to re-visit the bar.  We also put some jobsworth carrying buckets past the stage in his place so he doesn't disturb the rest of proceedings.  One settled down again, there's a dedication-cum-prayer by the Dean of Southampton remembering those on the ship and all who work in the port (this goes on a bit).  Then Mark Oldfield and Jane Streeton, who are our vocal soloists, enter to more applause.  Now for the main event - once the seagulls on the roof have shut up.

John is on the podium.  The brass and horn sections all have instruments poised ready for the downbeat...

BAAAAAAAAA!!! BA-BA-BA BAAAAAAAAA! BAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
'BE-HOLLLLLD.......the...SEAAAAA!!!!' CRASH!!!!

And so begins surely one of the best openings to any symphony ever written, let alone somebody's First. The general aim of this is to knock people clean out of their seats with the volume and splendour of it all, in much the same way as the Verdi we did on tour. After all the luscious strings and blowing brass the piece moves on to a faster bit, then the baritone enters, then...well, space does not permit a blow-by-blow account of the whole piece, you'll just have to listen to it all.  There are two - three, in fact - very good reasons for choosing to perform this other than the above; first, it's British and sea-related; second it was composed at around the same time as the Titanic was built; and thirdly, the Walt Whitman poem Vaughan Williams sets in the first movement includes the most apt lines for this week of commemorative events:

'Token of all brave captains
And of all intrepid sailors and mates
And of all who went down doing their duty'

The last movement the symphony is Mahler-length, nearly half an hour, and deals with the ongoing quest of geographical and metaphysical exploration. Its opening is vast and cosmic, the first bit of sustained reflective calm in the whole symphony, later more exotic and questing as the text demands.  In places it's almost like high-quality epic film music, at others one can hear clearly how much of a French influence the composer picked up (one achingly lovely passage accompanying the solo baritone is scored for muted horns, solo flute, oboe, cor, clarinet and solo violin and viola). The coda is a stroke of genius, with a false ending suddenly restarting as a gradual fade-out on two, then a single chord which is lost in the heights of the choir and the depths of the celli and basses.  Trust a seagull to nearly ruin it...

It was a triumph. The orchestra played superbly; the choir were perfectly tuned and by turns gloriously powerful and magically subtle. Best of all, we have had mountains of messages and emails praising the performance.  I'd like to think that somewhere, far away, the Titanic's band were listening, cheering us on...

* Hint: It's not Mercedes-Benz, Audi, VW or Porsche.

Titanic proportions

As most of the world cannot fail to have noticed, April 2012 brings with it the 100th year since the first and last voyage of the SS Titanic*. Southampton has a particularly strong connection with the liner, as it formally departed from its docks and sailed with a large number of local crew, and so to mark the auspicious date a new nautical-themed museum will open (which we'll cover later on), as well as various live commemorative events.  I'm going to be involved in one of these on Tuesday - but as before, more on that later.

By way of introduction, I decided to take a walk through the city centre and visit some of it's Titanic-related spots. The Titanic Passenger and Crew Memorial in the docks is normally off-limits to the public, but by a stroke of luck on Monday and Tuesday I'll be able to get in there for the rehearsal and concert and take a look. For now we will have to be content with the public memorials in the city, starting with one of the smallest but, for me, the most personally significant one.

The Titanic Musicians' Memorial isn't terribly obvious to the casual visitor, especially compared to the Highgate-Cemetery-level-of-grandiose Engineers' Monument a few yards away on East Park Terrace.  It's a small stone plaque on the wall of an otherwise unremarkable building occupied by a firm of solicitors whose employees may, in all probability, have never realised quite what it was, not least because the engraved text is rather small. In fairness, as originally planned they wouldn't have had cause to, as the plaque was inside a library on the site until London Road received the attention of the Luftwaffe in 1940.  The current replica was, disappointingly, only reinstated in 1990, but I suppose better late than never, especially as the mason responsible was a resident of Woolston. As illustrated by the photo below, the plaque is simple in design, with the names of the musicians surrounding an engraving.  I find the hand-made, almost child-like, quality of the piece highly poignant, particularly the central depiction of a kneeling figure - presumably Saint Cecilia - gently holding the ship back from the waves as if to allow the musicians a few final moments to finish playing 'Nearer my God to Thee', the melody of which is engraved below the image.  Bandleader Wallace Hartley, whose name sits at the head of this memorial, has his own individual monument in his hometown of Colne in Lancashire, as does Reginald Bricoux in Eastbourne.  As a musician myself I can't help feeling a great deal of affinity with the eight musicians of the Titanic, ordinary working men who when faced with certain death simply carried on doing what they did best, and arguably aided the survival of others in the process.

On a related matter, there is some doubt as to whether this hymn was in fact the last piece played by the band, and, even it was, which tune was used.  The famous scene in the James Cameron film uses the tune 'Bethany', as do Titanic films made in 1943 and 1953, however the British adaptation A Night To Remember did not.  This may simply be due to this tune being the most widely known in the United States and therefore the most obvious candidate to the producers.  Hartley, being British and a Methodist, would probably have known only the tunes 'Horbury' and 'Propior Deo' - and 'Horbury' is in fact the tune engraved on the memorial (I love the carver's detail in including a key signature of Eb and harmony notes). Two survivors who maintained that the last piece played was the 'Song of Autumn' may therefore have confused this waltz with the 3/4 metre of the hymn tune (or else heard a different group of musicians on the ship). Whatever the melody, there is little doubt that at least five of the musicians were still playing as the ship went down, until the angle of the deck made it impossible to continue.

The Titanic Engineers' Memorial is, as already mentioned, on a far grander scale and in a far more prominent location, opposite the Cenotaph. When I crossed the road from the Musicians' Memorial there was a moderately-sized group of visitors who had just got off a bus and were being given what was obviously part of a tour by some costumed guides.  A bronze angel sits over a columned screen on which the names of the lost are recorded, all on a double plinth above the road level.  I suppose it's only fair that a greater number of men who arguably provided a greater aid to survival (light and power as opposed to morale) get the larger memorial, and one which reflects the more physical nature of their work.  100,00 people are said to have attended its unveiling in 1914.

Titanic Engineers' Memorial

Travelling down the Above Bar St (i.e. 'above the Bargate', the still-extant northern gate to the medieval city) the next memorial is dedicated to the crew - especially the firemen and stewards - and lies inside the ruined church of Holy Rood, also a victim of bombing in 1940. It was originally built funded by public subscriptions on Southampton Common but was moved inside the church in 1973, partly to protect it from vandalism and partly to re-enforce the church's status as a memorial to the Merchant Navy. A plaque to the post office staff on the ship remains in the High St Post Office, but being late on a bank holiday I didn't get a chance to get a look at this one.

Reaching the waterfront (a spot I walked past on the Solent Way last time) the last spot of Titanic significance on this tour is Canute Chambers. A modern passer-by might note the Victorian style of the building, but without any trace of the company today they would be forgiven for missing that this, in 1912, was the headquarters of the White Star Line. It was here that anxious relatives crowded outside for days after 15th April waiting for news of the survivors and lost. The company hung large white sheets on the railings on which were written long lists of individuals, including separate lists of misspelt names, an occurrence which would be almost amusing if it were not so tragic.


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It was by pure luck that I walked back through East Park and spotted what had been spray-painted on the central pathway and the grass around it. It took a few seconds to work out what the white lines made up - it's more obvious from the north end - but the eye-shaped ellipses in threes on either side turned out to be the giveaway. Whoever had gone round with the spray-can had clearly had a pretty good knowledge of the ship, as they'd marked the position of the keel sections, the lifeboats, funnels, staircases and even Captain Smith's cabin.

 An American couple stood and admired the giant 'blueprints' as I took pictures as best I could. We both were surprised by just how massive the ship was (something it's rather difficult to convey photographically from a static ground-level viewpoint) even by modern standards, and this piece of temporary art was an excellent way of demonstrating this up-close.

And yet...despite all this it still seems like the city is ignoring this particularly significant part of its heritage. I don't mean that the majority of residents will associate the mention of the ship's name with a fictitious love affair on the cinema screen (now in 3D, I notice) rather than the extraordinary proportions of either the ship or the loss of life, but more that the city's acknowledgement of any kind of history is a mess.  Most people are ignorant of the existence of these memorials because they're tucked away, and not even in the way that lets you feel as if you've stumbled upon a hidden treasure.  There is no proper focus to the past: the old town and its walls, which should be meticulously preserved in as close a condition to medieval times as practical, are occupied by crumbling structures and encroached by a faceless giant shopping mall and derelict land. The docks are a particularly sad case; the public excluded, characterful buildings razed to make way for plastic-y corporate offices or generic apartments or yet more endless avenues of containers. I'm not opposed to the fact it's still a working port instead of a tourist attraction, but the half-hearted attempt at concealing the waterfront means that it manages to be an eyesore without also having the interestingness of it being open enough to observe what's going on, and appreciate what drives the town's industry.  Neither is this an attack on corporatism - Southampton owed its status in 1912 precisely to the success of large firms such as White Star and Cunard.  In return they gave it prosperity and civic architecture and an identity. I hope, and I hope not in vain, that the new museum will be at least a small step toward putting right all that is wrong with the town. It could be a fine city where heritage is able to compliment modernity and a civic identity is forged from the needs of commerce and of aesthetics. For now, however, it isn't, and until then it will never be as memorable or significant a place as in 1912.

Anyway, to finish on a positive note, we should at least be thankful that there are a number of commemorative events taking place in the current month, and that your author will not only be playing a prominent role in one in the coming days but intends to give a worthy blog entry about it.  There will be Vaughan Williams...

*Although often referred to as the RMS Titanic, the ship was never officially a Royal Mail Steamer so is correctly named as an ordinary steamship.

The Solent Way: Part 1

Yes, it's time for another epic/nearly epic ramble across some diverting part of southern England. Specifically, the Solent. Home turf. Mostly almost completely flat.

Introduction: The geography bit

It may be recalled that in the not-very-distant past I navigated the entire length of the River Itchen, a pleasant but otherwise unremarkable chalk stream that, as you may recall, wends its way from the hills a bit to the left of Winchester into the sea at Southampton. That description is broadly accurate apart from the last bit, because how the water from the Itchen ends up in the English Channel is actually a little more complicated than that and is responsible for the existence of the other footpath in the area.  Southampton, you see, is also the dropping-off point for the River Test, and the end of the Itchen Way is actually at the point where the two rivers meet. The combination of the two watercourses and millennia of subsequent erosion to soft rock means that a massive inlet called Southampton Water lies to the south of the city and carries all the river flow out to the English Channel. Adding to the picture is the lozenge-shaped Isle of Wight, which sits right at the bottom of the estuary and creates a complicated pattern of tides up its two sides (one of the reasons Southampton is such a successful port, as it has so much high water). The main landmass of the island is skewed rather to the left (west) so that a large section its northern shore creates a sheltered channel between Calshot and Keyhaven, which is one clue to how all of what we see today formed. The other is the famous series of chalk stacks (and lighthouse) at the very western tip of the island known as The Needles. These line up so remarkably well with a similar band of chalk on the Isle of Purbeck, some miles along the coast, that looking from above it's quite obvious that these were once joined. In fact during the last Ice Age sea levels were much lower and the northern channel described above was once the mouth of a 'River Solent', part of which still exists as the River Frome.  A narrower Southampton Water would have joined this just below where Selsey Bill is today and it would have been easy to walk across a now-vanished area of land from Purbeck to the Isle of Wight. In fact this appears to have been possible (albeit with wet feet) until a few millennia ago, as Roman buildings have been found in the sea near Yarmouth. At the end of the Ice Age, both glacial meltwater and the interesting process of glacial rebound uplift causing the bottom of Britain to sink flooded the river valley and eroded the chalk, creating what we see today.  If this isn't making much sense, here's a (very) not to scale map illustrating the gist of the last paragraph:

So, where are we going to go?

The boundaries of the Solent aren't officially defined; it is generally reckoned to be the mainland shore that roughly corresponds to that of the Isle of Wight.  However, the boundaries of the Solent Way are very specifically designed to meet up with the Bournemouth Coast Path at one end and the Sussex Border Path at the other, meaning the trail can act as one link in the UK section of the E9 Long-Distance Path. This is a massive 5000km series of paths (not all open as of 2012) up the entire northern coast of Europe, from Cabo de São Vicente in Portugal to Narva-Jõesuu in Estonia.  We're going to be taking in the less giddying prospect of a 63-mile journey from Milford-on-Sea to Emsworth, which involves traversing most of the waterside around Southampton Water and a bit on either side facing out into the sea.  Along the way we'll pass the harbour villages of Lymington and Keyhaven, the New Forest, an oil refinery, beaches, military installations, the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth and the mud flats of Langstone.  Plus quite a lot of boats. And some hovercrafts. 

Obviously, the entirely logical thing to do is to start in the middle:

Southampton to Hamble (10 miles)

The Itchen Way does not have a clearly defined end at Woolston. It just sort-of becomes the Solent Way, shrugging that the river has finished and deciding to merge into a coastal walking route. But there's a little bit of it we need to do before we can reach this point, and that's to start at where we will eventually return by ferry from an earlier stage.

The Hythe Ferry will deposit us right into the middle of Southampton, at Town Quay, which used to be a proper working quay with docks and stevedores swearing and smugglers smuggling and men in flat tweed caps rehearsing sentences starting with 'back in maa day...'. After years of use, then several of disuse, in the 1980s it acquired a car park at the end and some swanky new UPVC-clad buildings, including a Beafeater and various offices and bars, although seems not to be particularly lively these days. Still, it's quite handy to have the ferry deposit passengers here, as it means one can get straight back to walking the Solent Way from Hythe, having missed out about 15 miles otherwise needed to get round the mouth of the River Test.


View Larger Map 

Southampton's docks will be more fully covered in a future leg, as on this particular day the main focus of my interest would actually be departing from them and following, albeit several hundreds yards offshore, the route of The Way (makes it sound kinda' mystical, huh?). This was the Queen Elizabeth, Cunard's latest cruise liner (something which instantly dates this trip to quite some time in the past) which would be making its maiden voyage out into the world from the same berth (give or take) as the Titanic did, hopefully with a somewhat lengthier career afterwards.  There's not a particularly good view of the whole ship from anywhere other than the end of Town Quay - walking along Canute Road past the dock gates the view is largely obscured, thanks to Associated British Ports' public-spirited habit of grabbing all the available waterfront land and peppering it with warehouses, cranes and fences. I will concede that the ship was so bonking enormous this didn't matter much unless you were desperate for a view of the black expanse of hull over that of the decks and funnel, but the point remains.

The path crosses Dock Gate Four and then a level crossing, which used to be traversed quite regularly by boat trains and dock shunters (another line branched off and ran along the road to Town Quay, believe it or not) and still sees regular auto trains taking new cars and vans off to the rest of the country.  I have no idea if any car I've ever owned arrived this way, but it would be nice to think so. More interesting is the building opposite, South Western House, for this was once the main terminus station in the town, and a glorious, solid Victorian structure it remains, even retaining the green-strutted roof that once covered the platforms (and is now, with wearying predictability, a car park).  It was a logical place for trains to terminate, of course, as the docks were so close. You can almost still imagine the smell of steam trains, ladies in elegant frocks and barefoot young lads in clogs running after the tram (Street View, although not containing Edwardians).

After some dreary modern apartments the Way suddenly climbs a flight of steps on to the Itchen Bridge. It forms a long and surprisingly elegant curve over the river, given that essentially it represents an essay on the wonders of modular concrete construction.  What preceded it was wonderful in its idiosyncrasy, a 'floating bridge' chain ferry, fondly remembered by older Southampton residents and with its last incarnation still extant as a restaurant on the Hamble River.  It was even painted by L S Lowry in 1956, using his trademark hurrying stick-figure style. By the 1970s this was considered inadequate to carry the levels of motor traffic of the day (particularly buses which had to make the detour upstream to Northam Bridge to cross the river) and so a toll bridge was erected, towering over the river as the highest construction in the city up to that point. The city council have kept rather quiet about the exact date at which the tolls collected were equal to the cost of the bridge, finding it more convenient just to carry on charging for the privilege of driving from the City to Woolston. I, however, could cross completely free on foot, which had the added bonus of a good view of the Queen Elizabeth still being readied to set sail. There is a rather dense concentration of Samaritans phone numbers up here, complimenting the alarmingly minimalist guard rails. It's a bit windy too, and it has been known for double-decker buses to be diverted in heavy weather conditions. Uphill one side , downhill the other (Street View, and again).

On the Itchen Bridge

Safely on the other side (suicides and gusts of wind are the least of the potential hazards up there, especially after dark), Woolston (Street View) has retained a rather industrial character even with the removal of the Vosper Thornycroft ship factory at the quayside. There's still - still - an vast and embarrassingly empty plot of prime riverside land up for grabs here, which at one point was in line for an ambitious plan involving glass towers and a multi-faith library (Street View). At present its progress has reached the extent of about thirty houses and a new road. We've covered most of this before in the Itchen Way, so we shall jump ahead a few hundred yards down the road to the point where we turn the corner onto a proper expanse of water again at Weston Shore.  Weston (Street View) isn't a particularly nice area inland, but luckily the tower blocks (scheduled for demolition, and not a moment too soon) are segregated from the shore by some trees and a long expanse of lawn, on which has been erected some quasi-artistic benches. They're a little difficult to describe, but sort of naturally rise out of the turf and contain snatches of poetry or descriptions of birds.  There is a beach of sorts here, although it's shingle and mud, not sand, and the water has an awful lot of marine diesel, seaweed and other nasties in it.  There was a sizeable ribbon of people gathered on the shingle to watch the QE go out, but it wasn't moving yet so I pressed on, past play areas and concrete shelters to where the 'coastal road' goes through some woods although the path stays by the water. At this point there was a noise like a thousand trombones in an echo chamber as the biggest hooter within a fifty-mile radius boomed over the water.

Many of pairs of binoculars and camera lenses turned to fix upon the silhouette of the docks, which unfortunately obscured the ship behind a car park and a pair of giant grain silos. I found a convenient spot at the end of a slipway to the shore, and by this time the Queen Elizabeth had rounded the bottom of the docks and was providing an unexpected photo opportunity for commuters on the Isle of Wight ferry. The huge ship slowly processed down the Solent accompanied by yachts and small boats until twenty minutes later it had become a small silhouette rounding the Isle of Wight. I have to conclude that it was somewhat less elegant than its namesake of old, rather more in the 'floating block of flats' style utilised by the majority of modern cruising vessels. I'd moved on by the time it had disappeared.

The next settlement, Netley, is a pleasant village with one main street along the waterside and into the country park at the other end (Street View).  I used to come here a lot as a child, motivated by the possibility of either riding my bike down the slope or, later, breaking numerous bamboo rods in attempting to fly a kite. There's a Victorian church with an octagonal tower standing in the middle of the large lawn, which seems a rather odd entity unless you know what this place used to be (Street View).  It's actually the last remaining part of a huge military hospital which treated patients from the Boer War up to the Second World War, and had its own railway station and cemetery to service this function. The wings were removed in 1966 leaving just the central chapel standing, overlooking the water at the bottom of a slope. I keep meaning to go up the dome but so far have never had a visit coincide with it being open. Ah well, there is still time. 

Having passed through the country park and yacht club, the next bit is rather nondescript shingle with woodland to the left and water to the right.  Across the water is Fawley, a word which, locally, isn't used to signify the town. Instead it describes the far more massive oil refinery and power station that sits on the opposite bank of the Solent and, more controversially, on the edge of the New Forest. Indeed, when we come to walk the section on this side, the complex occupies so much land that the Solent Way doesn't even bother to rejoin the shore after heading inland to cross the Beaulieu River, but cuts across the Forest to Hythe. Piers jut out into the water allowing tankers of various sizes (although not the biggest supertankers, of course) to pump their eye-wateringly valuable cargo into the many storage tanks onshore.  I find it slightly disagreeable that this industrial hinterland exists right next to an outstandingly beautiful area of medieval forest ('New' is relative), but at the same time there was something quite arresting about the equally awesome forest of towers and spires and pipelines and storage tanks, particularly near sunset when all the marker lights and floodlights were on and the massive vapour stack smudged into a clear sky. Is it trite to suggest that this place is a cathedral to our worship of oil, and even majestic in its apocalyptic desolation, full of fire and smoke and metal and black gold?

Insert environmentalist slogan here

Viewed from above (see Google Maps) the storage tanks, with tops in various states of corrosion, appear more than anything like a set of giant paint pots containing shades of red, brown, blue, grey, black, yellow, or green where they have been removed and grass springs up.

Approaching Hamble, there's a much smaller oil terminal on our side of the water, and the Solent Way is shoehorned up a narrow boardwalk underneath a pier, also containing several massive oil pipes.  Up ahead is a white spattering like an Impressionist painting, of yachts parked in the river Hamble, and an area of semi-beach with sandy grasses and woods behind. It's through these woods I go to reach the village proper, and emerge out of a narrow lane in the main street (Street View). As this ends at the riverside in a loop the place is literally a dead-end town, although this is hardly appropriate given that the town is really quite moneyed. It's also a place where a large part of the economy revolves around boats.  Down a slope at the marina is the yacht club, where I played a quartet gig whilst a sixth-former, and the pier that form the terminal for the Hamble-Warsash Ferry, which is where I will resume the trail next time.