Bills Posts

Gosport & Fareham Inshore Rescue Service is a charitable service not directly associated with the RNLI I believe. But it is a very busy and highly respected service for the Solent and surrounding area.

Located at the eastern end of Stokes Bay, not that far from Gilkicker, one of the Palmerston forts. All along the sea front of Stokes Bay is the Golden Mile, a straight forward walk which you can usually find in use at any time of the day, or indeed the year, mostly regardless of the weather.

About halfway along is Pebbles, a very good restaurant and cafe, next to the Stokes Bay Sailing club, which is also very very popular. The club building played a key role in the run up to D-Day, coordinating movements in the Solent. Just behind and the other side of the road is a crazy golf course. We really must play there.

At the western end is the Diving Museum, the one we haven’t been to yet. Really must do that. On a Friday, we like to get fish and chips and park up, and watch the cruise ships go out. When we see a ship that we’ve been on I swear at the people who are in our cabin. It’s only because I’m jealous.

This memorial sits near the waters edge in the Elson area of Gosport, and was erected to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day, specifically the embarkation of troops from a slipway which is immediately adjacent to this site.

It is one of several sites throughout Gosport that either directly commemorate or act as a reminder of the significant role that the town played in the preparations for that momentous occasion.

From the slipway, thousands of troops and vehicles would be transferred to ships, the various roads in the town, such as Jellicoe Avenue, specially widened to allow thousands of tanks and other vehicles to wait for loading, down to the beaches of Stokes Bay where even today you can still see the concrete “chocolate blocks” that were the hard standing th allowed vehicles to transfer to landing and other ships without being bogged down in the sand. Then there are the concrete Hards where many of caissons that would become The Mulberry Harbour on the French coast.

These and other sites mark the passing of a momentous event. And confirms Gosport’s place in history.

The picture is of Tadnoll Heath in Dorset, looking towards the Purbeck Hills. The Heath is a nature reserve, a site of special scientific interest and a Ramsay site (which I had never heard of before today) that is a site of international importance under the Ramsay convention that deals with the conservation of wetlands.

The path we were following was well trodden, and whilst not knowing any of the above, I did my utmost to stick to the path, knowing the value of heathland in general.

I have to say that although it was only a brief walk, it was delightful. I understand that there are some interesting sites to visit on heathland, not the least of which is at least one Neolithic site.

Whilst I didn’t have enough time today to explore as much as I would have liked to have done, nor I must admit did I have the correct attire should it have rained, I thoroughly enjoyed my brief walk, and will definitely be going back to have a more detailed look around.

I am very sorry, I am completely unprepared for a post tonight, I recognise that this is close to the equivalent of not posting, but I want to keep the count the count running.

I was going to write a piece about a famous musician who was born in Islington, but live a large part of his life in Gosport. Nat Gonella was a Jazz Trumpeter, here’s a video of some of his music; https://bit.ly/Nat_Gonella

There is a square in town named after him, and this sculpture is located at the junction of Gordon Road and Bury Road. I was determined to do something better that a post saying it was too late, and I’m tired, so this is what you are going to get. But, effectively that is what is going to happen. I left it way too late, and then when it came to writing this blog article it would become very obvious that I had done no even basic research, and was just going recite a load of facts from Wikipedia.

Just not good enough I’m afraid. So, as I said you are going to get a rubbish post but something with just a little bit of information. I do apologise for this. I will try and do better over the weekend.

I have written about Locality and how it came about in earlier posts. This being the 1046th post I’m not going to plough through the posts to identify where I’ve written about it.

The point of locality is to learn about the history of the area, and. I haven’t been doing that much recently. I’ve been waffling on about different things. There are lots of things in town that I could write about but haven’t done so.

I’m going to change that. Gosport is a fascinating town, wrapped in history. Let’s find out about some of it.

Don’t worry, it’s not permanent. It’s just that every so often, my interests rotate. So, once again I find my interest in my Nikon rekindled except I can’t find any of the batteries for it, and my interest in toy photography is back so I am once again watching Sir Dork videos on you tube (yes, this is a real person, and he’s quite good at it), some I am going to try something a bit silly in the morning, when I go for my walk. It may, or may not work.

Sorry, this is going to be a short one. My brain has just decided that it can’t be bothered to think any more tonight, it’s too late, I want to go to bed and read a bit.

For the first time in nearly three weeks (actually, it’s only a day short) I did an early morning walk of Gosport town centre. Not my normal walk, in that I cut it short by about a mile.

I enjoyed the walk, the weather was lovely the sun shone with a delightful warmth, even at 6AM shorts and t-shirt were perfect clothing. I thought I would follow up on my post from yesterday, written in anticipation.

The wild patch near the railway station was exactly that, a mass of grass with the occasional dot of colour, yellow flowers going to seed.

North cross street is slowly being torn up. Presumably in preparation for traffic. They are doing things to south cross street. I’ve not looked at that. I will try and remember to do so tomorrow.

Very little change at the waterfront, except the lightship does appear to be back in service, which is really good. There’s some construction work going on next to it. Only small wooden huts, but I can’t work out what they are going to be used for – they look like fast food places.

The cockle pond water was a bit murky, I couldn’t see the bottom. No sign of jelly fish. Not really surprising, but the miniature crayon fish appear to be present in large numbers. I’ll keep an eye on them.

That was it then, I more or less went straight home afterwards.

If things go according plan tomorrow morning, I will be waking up early enough to go for a walk, even if it is only to the waterfront or back.

I’m quite keen to see how the towns wilding patches are doing. I walk past a couple of them and they have been doing nicely.

Of course, there are the road and construction works. We walked in to town on Saturday. So I’m reasonably up to date as to what is happening in the moment, not the specifics of what is happening or planned. Obviously, nothing will have happened over the weekend.

We noticed that there was a string of lights on the lightship. I’m wondering if it is back in operation as a restaurant, that would be quite nice.

Then of course there are the cockle ponds. What’s happening there? Have the jelly fish gone, what about the shrimps. What’s going on in the ponds?

Hopefully, we’ll find out in the morning.

I’ve left it too late tonight, sorry. We had a walk in to Gosport this morning, well nearer midday really. The hight street was Pretty busy. We were surprised to see a number of Morris Dancer groups around the town. weatherspoons was particularly busy.

When we reached the waterfront, we stopped and asked one of the dancers what was going on. He told us that it was Gosport Morris dancers day of music, and that they always invited groups to join them. The groups were done in Gosport, and were making their way over to Portsmouth to carry on for the afternoon.

Now, I have no particular desire to get involved in Morris dancing, although it does look like a healthy (although, I suspect there’s a good drinking aspect) activity. It is I suspect similar to bowls in that the social aspect is very demanding – there were groups from as far afield as Yorkshire for todays event. Having said all that, they are very entertaining to watch, although I do wonder how many might end up with either a good bruise, or possibly a broken thumb if they accidentally get whacked with their rather substantial sticks.

It was a real pity that we missed the dancing, I would really have liked to have seen that. Now that reminds me about the Sam a band – Gosport has a very good one. I really must try and find out when they are playing next.