The Museum

Back in April, the centennial anniversary of the ill-fated voyage of S.S. Titanic put Southampton, if temporarily, at the centre of the world's attention. Unsurprisingly, myself and other friends and family members were most readily involved in musical contributions to the commemorations, not least the massive performance of A Sea Symphony in the docks on the actual anniversary of the sailing.  A more lasting result of all this was that the much-awaited SeaCity Museum opened its doors to visitors, finally furnishing the city with a maritime museum of suitable dimensions for it's historical significance. And today, I finally got around to making a visit - with the intention of publishing a review here, of course.

As much as anything else, the creation of such an attraction represents the city council finally getting off their backsides and actually making something happen with regards to getting some tourist footfall (and income) into the town, although it's a pity that, as has happened before, the (now defunct) Tory administration were claiming credit for it all when in fact the project was initiated during the years of a hung council.  There was a debacle on a national scale during the planning stage when the council tried to sell paintings and a sculpture from the city art gallery to fund the project, and only backed down when the Tate found some legal clause forbidding them from doing so (massive public opposition is much easier to ignore these days). An added contrivance is that all Southampton addresses are generously being sent a free ticket, except that to use it you have to visit together as a household, can only visit outside school holidays in 2012 and not during the first six days of opening. In other words, if you want to take your whole family, you have to have a free Saturday or Sunday or else an inset day which you take off work, and you won't be the first to get in. Typically for the ID Era, they'll also want proof of residence, so if you have a family of three and were hoping to sneak in Aunty Mabel from Whitstable when she came to visit, sorry, forget it; she'll have to pay.

Still, it's a huge leap forward from the little maritime museum that preceded it, housed in a medieval wool house opposite the ferry terminal.  It was interesting, filled with models of ships and bits of anchors and compasses and other delightful nautical clutter, but hopelessly outdated and greatly under-representing the port. Although the inside of the new museum is bespoke, only a little actual new building needed to take place.  The building housing the galleries was built in the 1930s as part of the Civic Centre, and used to contain the law courts and the police station as well as an elegantly thin tower with a four-face clock at the top.  In a wonderful gesture towards the city's heritage, the clock bells chime the first phrase of Southampton resident Isaac Watts' hymn O God, Our Help In Ages Past on the hour. The coppers moved out into a rather Orwellian monolith overlooking the docks in 2010 and since then the entire East Wing has been refreshed and refitted to contain the exhibition halls. The only bit of construction needed was a rather more angular gallery at the north end, replacing some flowerbeds with a series of triangular sections concertinaed into one another, presumably to suggest waves, sails or the bow of an ocean liner. This also forms the shape of the museum's logo, which looks like an upside-down factory with a chimney. They've at least tried a little to blend it into the existing structure with a nice façade of Portland Stone and some smoked glass.

Let's go inside...

The entrance lobby sets out the tone of the museum.  It's not huge, with today just a single attendant behind the ticket desk and a single staircase and lift to the first floor.  The wing is listed, and a lot of interest is in seeing how they've managed to change the building's function whilst maintaining the heritage features, something which has been done rather well. Other than the contemporary block-colour and sans serif style of inserted walls, the original Portland stone and marble is the main interior texture of the building.  The ceiling vaults of the upstairs atrium have a pleasing decorative pattern to them, and the signs directing entrances to the courtrooms have been retained.  One side of the floor, formerly Court Three, is on the general history of Southampton, and seems like a sensible place to begin. The false roof has been left open in places to show the ornate painted wood panelling of the original court, and one can see the coat of arms at the far end too. Space does not permit a full description of every exhibit in the room, suffice to say there were sections on most periods of history from neolithic to modern, and appropriate artifacts.  Beyond this room was a smaller one containing a huge model of the Queen Mary (from the old museum) and a series of displays on various immigrations to and through the city - more artistic than informative, it has to be said, preferring representative objects over things like statistics.

Unsurprisingly, the other half of the exhibition space is given over to the Titanic.  There was an immediate focus on the actual people on the ship rather than the vessel itself - it wasn't built or registered here, after all - and especially the crew, who were mostly Southamptoners.  This was done through following the situation of five individuals on the ship, from Captain Smith to a fireman, through the various stages of the voyage and sinking.  Notable were the wall listing all the items taken on board the ship at Southampton (did you know they carried horse hair and opium?) and the wireless operator's room.  The main part of local interest was the room dealing with the survivors. The floor was the now-famous map of 1912 Southampton with every residence that lost a crew member marked in red.  I also liked that the other courtroom had been used as a space explaining the Titanic disaster enquiry, still left as a court with jury benches, dock and judge's seat. Downstairs, in the new pointy-roofed bit was a special exhibition (presumably the first of many) on the legacy of the Titanic and the public's lasting fascination with it.  There was an interesting wall comparing five films from the 20th century about the ship, and another with a huge variety of objects essentially cashing in on the name, from beer to dolls.  Other areas dealt with the unanswered questions about the voyage - was the ship going too fast, could the lookouts see enough, and the morality of exploring the wreck. One wonders what future exhibitions might occupy this space.

Things to like:

 

The interactive stuff 

This was all very well-done, chiefly because all the touchscreens and videos were generally used for the most appropriate purpose, showing and explaining things that couldn't be done so well using static displays and information panels.  Some were more child-orientated than others (drive sail the Titanic using a real wheel and telegraph! Rub the screen to 'dig' for buried Saxon treasure!) but all were educational.  There were some other nice touches too, like the 'stained glass window' that was actually a subtly moving projection (watch long enough and you could see the bird dislodge an apple from the tree which fell on the medieval trader's foot) and the Roman video. I personally liked the circular table with an overview map, which cycled round every period of the city's history every ten minutes and allowed several different people at a time to zoom into the relevant areas and read little hotspots of information.

Size and content

 

I ended up spending about as much time in there as I wanted to spend (in fact I could have stayed longer but it was closing), which I count as a success bearing in mind I'm the sort of visitor who sets out intending  to read all the information and look at all the objects.  Everything in there was also interesting, relevant and objectively presented (although interestingly, a companion on this visit noted perhaps a slight left-of-centre tone, particularly the focus on ordinary working people and several mentions of trade union involvement, both of which accurately reflect the town's political direction for most of its modern history).  That said, see criticisms below.

Looks 

 

The conversion from law courts to museum has been carried out with great sensitivity to the building and as a result the whole place looks great.  One of the interesting features, which the architects may or may not have been aware of is the feeling, of being in a transient space, as if one is able to observe the different stages of history just by being there, and there is certainly no sense of having hidden or thrown out the previous function of the building - indeed, it is purposely left on show in places.  Full marks to the builders.

And a few things for improvement:

 

A bit perfunctory in places.

 

Although the exhibits manage to cover a fair chunk of Southampton's history, there are some significant omissions. At no point was it actually explained why the area became a port in the first place, nothing on the actual operation of the docks or the liner trade, nothing on other aspects of transport (the railway, the airport and flying boats), and nothing on important periods such as the Georgian spa industry or the Blitz. One appreciates that space was a little limited, and that the conservators had to pick and choose, but with the potential of interactive features physical room need not have been a hindrance in this respect. In particular, the business of the port operations would surely have been a publicity opportunity that an organisation such as ABP would have seized upon, yet there was no mention of the modern container port.  In a similar vein, several things that were featured were inadequately explained. Had I not some knowledge of early modern history I feel I would have been mystified as to who the Huguenots were and why they were fleeing from France - and even then it would have been nice to read more than a single excerpt from the digitised account book belonging to the businesswoman named Judith. Why the Romans and Saxons actually settled in this area was also barely explained.  Some of the Titanic section also felt a bit padded-out - display cases spaced just a bit further apart than they might have been, not quite enough detail. The only exception was the economic background to the era and its crew, which I didn't know about previously.

It's tempting to say that this was solely due to budget constraints: this is all we could afford; is a museum worth it when we have to cut front-line services, that sort of thing; but it is also perhaps symptomatic of a more general modern tendency to assume that people have short attention spans and won't appreciate detailed descriptions or masses of stuff to look at.  I don't think that's a good way of setting out on an entity like this - surely a good museum is one which caters for many people with different levels of interest about different things, each one of whom who will want to see some things in great detail but skip over others?  A museum should also be a starting-point for further private research into areas of particular interest, and as such ought to at least introduce as much as possible to the visitor.

English only

 

Given the international nature of the city - and the fact that this is a key feature of all the bits about immigration - it seems surprising that there was not a single sign, map, or other piece of information in anything other than English.  The city council publish documents in nearly every tongue under the sun, and rightly so when there are so many languages being spoken here, but not at the museum. One would at least have expected French and Polish. 

Would I recommend a visit? I would say yes, but not to expect the experience to be on same scale as the maritime museums in Liverpool or Belfast. It is more of an afternoon visit than a whole day's attraction. One thing I can't really judge is how interesting a non-Southampton visitor would find it  - I was not particularly impressed by Bristol's municipal museum recently due to finding it too 'localist' - and in fact also thought many of the same other criticisms about that as I have with SeaCity. The general impression of the place was that it was more concerned with people than systems or physical things, which might be less appealing to the outside visitor. However, the widespread appeal of the Titanic should at least provide a good level of familiarity.

To the ends of the earth

Yesterday I was able to travel to London and go to the Science Museum. Whilst such an undertaking may seem ill-advised on a Saturday in school holidays, I needed to visit now because it was my only chance to see Universe of Sound: The Planets, an exhibition featuring Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia performing Holst's eponymous suite, as well as a new commission from Joby Talbot entitled Stars, Systems, Worlds, Infinity.  All this was intended to demonstrate the workings of the symphony orchestra and its constituent instruments, and as such each section of the orchestra has its own curtained 'chamber' with the surround sound and video matched to give the impression of sitting amongst the players at that location.

I'd initially been alerted to its existence by a friend who is working as a guide at the exhibition, and who was very pleased to see me there. It turned out I'd fortuitously arrived during a lull in visitors (apparently it can become quite busy with families, and indeed the installation was extended by a month to cope with visitor numbers) and was able to try my hand at percussion in Mars and Venus, playing along to the suite.  This is harder than it might seem even for a seasoned performer, not least counting tens of bars in rests or held rolls and then coming off at the right moment (snare drum technique is also not nearly as intuitive as it looks). Anticipating that many visitors will not necessarily read music, there are helpful video screens in which players from the orchestra explain what you need to do and guide you in with the help of some Guitar Hero-style graphics.  I gave the tam-tam a resounding whack and then played some gentle glockenspiel notes before my guide showed me over to the conducting pods. 'These are really cool' he explained, demonstrating how the motion sensors would detect my hand movements as I followed the beats on the 'conductors-eye' screen. The simulator is limited to controlling volume and showing accuracy of beating; the music will continue even if you stop and there is no way to control tempo or interpretation.  (I suspect no current technology is sophisticated enough to interpret the nuances of a conductor's direction in the way human players do, and indeed the facial and non-beating gestures I made were pointless). But it is a good way of demonstrating what the conductor must do.

Even as somebody who regularly plays in several orchestras there was a great deal of interest in walking round to a different section to my own, and hearing the sound of the orchestra from another point - wind, brass, organ.  The curators had helpfully put out the instrumental parts in their respective chambers for those who could read them, so I would spend each Planet following what I though was most interesting - harps in Saturn, upper strings in Uranus, horns in the Talbot piece.  Possibly the most interesting part was a split-screen showing variously the horn, bassoon, trumpet, violin and timpanist.  Below them was a continuous commentary of their thoughts as they were playing the piece (presumably transcribed from listening through afterwards).  This included a little banter over virtuosic passages, but also fascinating insights into the actual business of performing the music - the trumpeter explaining how the repeated notes in Mars became uncomfortable to play by the end, the violinist explaining how he watches both the conductor and the leader at once, the timpanist counting rests and the conductor watching his stick. The most touching was the principal horn trying to articulate what it was like to play the solo that opens Venus, how she just let herself play it and trusted she had judged the acoustic of the room and the other players that followed her.  It was a wonderfully intimate moment to see the other players responding appreciatively and her satisfaction at performing what was essentially just four notes, but notes of such significance which had been entrusted to her.  Next to this screen was another showing Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and, in a similar vein, his thoughts on the music and its merits.  'In two minutes he has changed the character utterly' he mused, a little after the aforementioned horn solos in The Bringer of Peace.  Also insights into the business of conducting: 'Muti used to watch for the brass players' embouchure to place the downbeat - sometimes the conductor is led by the orchestra'; 'what makes the rhythm avoid becoming repetitive is that he is always changing what is happening around it...sometimes it's 3+2 and sometimes 2+3...you have to be very controlled and not get carried away by the excitement of the music'. Best of all; 'the sound of the symphony orchestra...something you cannot get from anything else' and 'People who don't really listen to classical music, don't know much about the orchestra - they still know The Planets'.

I must have spent nearly two hours - two complete performances of all the music - in the gallery and eventually left back through the clocks and hourglasses to eat lunch. I was very pleased to discover that although a little out of the way on the first floor, the installation is right above the main ground floor gallery which is open to the roof, and so Holst was being broadcast right over all the cars and steam locomotives and rockets where most of the museum's visitors were.  Whilst one might, being critical, wonder what a piece of music based on astrology is doing in a science museum, I am tempted to include this brief summary of the exhibition in my 'myth of elitism' series, as it is yet another laudable method of opening up to the public the joy and wonder of classical music and the amazing worlds of sound created by the orchestra.  The Planets, although overplayed in parts (I'm thinking especially Mars and Jupiter), deserves the fame it has achieved, and has always been a favourite piece of mine, particularly Neptune with its glittering textures, chilling dissonances and that extraordinary use of voices (something I pay homage to in A Child of the Snows, and which also featured in the Talbot piece). I hope Holst's music, for all his later misgivings about its popularity, will continue to bring many more souls under the spell of the orchestra.

Having picked up some reduced-price chamber music from Chappells (I wanted a score of Holst, but they only had big ones which were overpriced) I then raced home and got back in enough time to see the Olympic Torch being carried through my city. Yes, it was historic. Yes, we all briefly felt part of something big, proud that our largely unremarkable town was a small part of a huge event. But I have to say I will remember the exhibition with more affection than the minutes spent on a street corner, with all the vapid sponsors' stooges faking a party in the drizzle and finally a man with a surprisingly small gold stick running past in few seconds. For all its ceremony, the Olympic relay felt ordinary and mundane; Holst, by contrast, seemed otherworldly and transcendental, filled with wonder and fascination. Better still, it is more accessible. One does not have to wait in the rain or fight through a crowd to experience the music, it is available to anyone as long as there are ears to hear it. That, surely, is the more lasting and generous legacy?

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.

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.


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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.

The River Itchen (part 1)

As every local primary school pupil is taught, Southampton's long history as a port is thanks to it being at the confluence of two rivers. The fact that the Itchen and the Test converge here is largely a matter of geology, as the relative hardness of the chalk downs to the north has been responsible for directing the water's flow over millions of years. Even into the city, the landscape is considerably undulating.

I should know. I live half way up the highest hill in the city, one that incoming flights have to dodge the pub at the top of as they go over. Surprisingly though, I'm only a hundred yards or so from the river, and there's a footpath for its entire length, 32 miles from the beach at Woolston to the National Trust-owned house and gardens at Hinton Ampner, via Winchester. So it seemed logical to try and follow it.

The Itchen takes a sort of walking-stick route, heading north from the source and then gradually turning round a hundred and eighty degrees by the time it hits Winchester. The 'official' start of the Itchen Way is Sholing station, but as it's nowhere near the river and probably only for travel convenience, the bottom 'corner' of the river at Weston Shore is a more logical place to start.

Stage 1: Woolston - Shawford (12 miles)



Woolston is not the most picturesque of places. Across Southampton Water, Fawley oil refinery and all its associated sea traffic obscure any view of the New Forest. The area suffered the closure and subsequent demolition of the Vosper shipyard (which re-opened in Portsmouth) and it shows in the form of the empty expanse of riverside land and the general run-down feel of the place. There were grand plans for this space a few years back, with ideas including the Solent's first mini-skyscrapers, a multi-faith worship centre and 'community spaces', none of which have progressed beyond shiny computer simulations. A short while later the river flows under the enormous concrete span of the Itchen Bridge, which was thrown up in the 1970s to replace an elderly but efficient ferry. You can still see the slipway, but I refrained as most of the characters down there were in the trade for 'Mexican agriculture'.

The next few miles are rather boring, mostly side streets and cutways where the only view of the river is momentary, and the other bank occupied by a wharf or scrapyard. There's a faintly pointless loop around Bitterne Manor where the route meets itself again on the other side of the street, but it's worth mentioning the Roman site of Clausentum by the water here (no sizable remains today beside the odd denarius). Eventually we reach Bitterne Park and get to follow the river by the park that gives the suburb its name. I grew up here, and save for the exact names of the takeaways little has changed in that time. The chemist retains its art nouveau green tiles, whilst the boatyard still hasn't been turned into retirement homes. The clock tower on the traffic island known as the Triangle is nicked from elsewhere: it used to stand in the city but was moved when motor transport became sufficiently fast that accidental demolition was likely.

Riverside Park itself has a decent-sized miniature railway, which I remember being enlarged with a second track, sidings and a proper grown-up looking station with a footbridge. If you're a six-year-old wanting to ride behind a 1/10th scale live steam loco, there's no better place to be on a Sunday afternoon.

The Itchen started off looking fairly purposeful, drawing big wide curves as it cuts the east side of Southampton in two. But by only two miles upstream, at the top end of the park, it's shrunk to barely a road's width, and from here on only about half of it is original, thanks to various diversions and artificial channel caused by the watercress industry, railways, motorways and the building of an airfield. In the woods on the opposite bank was Woodmill outdoor activities centre, where Year Tens learn why modern boatbuilding has progressed beyond oil drums and pallets. I'd been to here many times as a child, on Boys' Brigade trips to the pitch and putt, but Mans Bridge had been as far as we'd ever gone, so it was rather more interesting on the other side of the A27. From here to the north of Winchester, the river had been deepened and straightened to allow watercress and other goods to be carried by water, and the water splits into several channels, with the main one heading off left round the back of the White Swan and the garage where I bought my car. The footpath, however, carries on roughly northwards into the woods, following the former canal towpath, swerving round the approach lights for Southampton Airport's runway, until it hits the biggest obstacle so far - six lanes of the M27. As is so often the case, the path has to follow the motorway along to the nearest underpass and then double back on the other side. Here it follows a flat piece of flood plain between the airport and the Itchen Valley Country Park. The noise of various turboprops spooling up and down could be heard beyond the trees at regular intervals, whilst on the other side the river wove a ragged trail across the meadows.

Eventually the path goes under the Eastleigh-Fareham railway line via a pebbly bridge, and bypasses Eastleigh itself. The town was built almost entirely on the back of the railway works here, and although one can't see them from the river the builds are still largely terraced workers' houses and industrial-age public buildings. The leafy riverbank avoids most of the waiting ballast trucks and auto wagons and instead heads for the the suburban park.

A quick loop under the London main line and back again, and open countryside reappears, albeit with the railway close by. The Itchen Navigation is almost dead straight for several long sections here, with only the occasional kink or wobble at bridges on minor roads. The original river veers whimsically off into villages and over fields, returning periodically to its parent like an inquisitive child.

Presently the footpath crosses to the western bank and gets very close to the railway line on its embankment. This is Shawford (the main village is some way to the east) with its station on a brick viaduct. There's not much that stops here, even at peak hours, so I had time to wander around a little, lucky as the only ticket machine is well hidden. There are some delightful cottages by the minor river channel and a pub, and going under the railway lines leads to a sloping area of open land, on the other side of which is the M3. The motorway has had a rather considerable effect on the landscape from here, and there's no avoiding it, as we shall see.

And tomorrow, we'll be going the rest of the way to Winchester.