Bills Posts

Between the train in the header picture, and the entry in Gosport’s next entry in the timeline that says “1540 Gosport described as a little village. It isn’t so much Gosport as a little village that I want to write about

Rather it is a little community hidden away in a quiet corner of the town. The village of Little Woodham. Little Woodham is a 20th century recreation of a 17th century village. We have been there before.

The village is active in the sense that it becomes populated by people playing their part. We had a good chat with a lady button maker and met a surprisingly young man who was able to tell us a lot about his life as a bodger. He was working away at his lathe, this time making a chair leg, to replace one broken earlier. One of the many little bodges.

I’d quite like to go again.

These manholes are all covered up now. They are getting ready to take traffic. It’ll be interesting to see how things are progressing in town. There were signs of activity down at the bus station as well, not much, a bit of fencing, that kind of thing.

The only problem will be that it will affect the tourist office. I think it will have to move to one of the currently closed shops in town.

Also there’s a business, bicycles, but I get the impression they do a lot of charity work. They serviced ours a while back and did a good job for a reasonable price.

I’ll have to review my blogposts for the timeline. Did I do one for when the plague hit the town? Or I think it was the fortifications? I might have done one for that. I’ll have to see. I think it may be the 1600’s next, when Gosport got its name – if I recall correctly.

For the last two and a bit weeks I have been cat sitting. No three mile walks in the morning, working 6AM – 9PM, through choice, rather than watch TV. It was fine, I’m not moaning at all.

The morning walks have a tendency to feed my writings. Not going out has made the writing not as easy as it should be. That’s been quite a challenge, and I am looking forward to getting back into the old routine. One thing, I’ve had no pain in my leg today. I’m kind of hoping that the relative inactivity has done it some good.

I think I might take next week to review where I am with my interests and see where I can develop them. That should give me something to write about.

I haven’t been out much today. I walked to the local store, it’s only 5 minutes away through a small patch of trees. I’m very aware that I have taken practically no pictures over the last couple of weeks.

I thought I would take a couple of pictures of the leaves. I was playing with the camera. The header picture is almost right. I’m going to have another go tomorrow.

I quite like the picture, it’s simple but I like it.

I’ve been trying to think when the urge to write bit me. I think it was around 2006 time. I have a reporters notebook from around that time, where I was writing down thoughts and intentions.

I think I can safely say that, to be honest, things have not changed that much. In some cases I am still writing about the same things, even saying the the same things in my writings. That’s really not very good is it?

There are a few areas where things have progressed though, partly driven by technology of which this blog is my prime example. That coupled with my locality project, have definitively broadened the scope of what I write about.

Just occasionally though, I hit a dry spot. Just for a few moments I considered not doing the blog. Only a few moments, and then I looked at my last hand written journal (which is still going, it has a few pages left, but is most;y used for quick notes and the odd musing these days.

But having considered not doing it, I thought no, come on Bill. You’ve been going on about reaching 1035 posts, you really are not from it now. It would be silly to give up. And yes, indeed, it would be silly.

Leg, actually – what did you think I was going to say?

For a while now, I have been getting a pain in my lower left leg. It’s below the knee, and it isn’t there all the time. It’s more than a bit frustrating, to the extent that I think I will be off to get to get some advice from the doctors.

I have to admit that voltarol definitely helps. I am wondering if using a foot stool as I do in the evenings makes it worse. There was a point where I had been sat watching tv, foot on footstool, Stood up, extreme really quite difficult to walk pain. Today, very little pain all day. This makes me thing that it is muscular. Is it a case of taking it easy? I have been trying to do that, but I also need to get out. A walk into town only takes 15 minutes, and done at a casual pace is hopefully not too much of a strain.

I have one more week in Waterlooville, and then I am back to normal – and the morning walk, which I haven’t been doing lately? I hope to resume them.

It’s only when I get home that I sometimes realise that I have decided to write about some aspect I had seen earlier in the day had not taken a picture of what it was I wanted to talk about. A tad frustrating to say the least.

Such was the case today. We walked in to town, in my case for the first time in two weeks. The area which a few weeks ago I had labelled as the home of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, given the chaotic mass of cables and pipes that lay underground at the junction of North & South Cross Streets and the high street.

We were talking to a friend about the changes that were planned. It was my understanding have had an admittedly quick read that the changes were to be temporary. Apparently not. In a way it makes sense. It appears that direct access to the waterfront is to be limited to busses only. I had been wondering how busses were going to reverse into the traffic flow. It looks like they will not have to worry about that.

1417 first fortifications built at Gosport

Before I came to Gosport, I had never encountered anything like the defences that had been established and built here since the fifteenth century. Of course, I have, we all have (I suspect) experienced things like castles, with or without moats, walled cities like York or St Malo – a fascinating place to walk around – well, they all are really.

Anyhow, back to Gosport. Defences were started in 1417, somewhere around Fort Blockhouse, the entrance to the harbour. I haven’t done much specific research but I suspect that led on to the ramparts that were built around what is now the inner town. There are some remnants, but nothing like what there was.

The main thing though was the construction of the Palmerston forts, a series of large fortifications built in the 19th. Century intended to defend the town against invasion from France the prospect of which was feeding fears.

There are at least six of these forts in Gosport, including one between Gosport and Fareham. Fort Brockhurst in Elson is in very good condition and opens a couple of times a year. Well worth a visit. There’s more to be told here.

No, genuinely, not in this case an ironic understatement – literally, a bit of rain. I was awakened around 4AM it was quite light and the rain was coming down quite heavily.

Not only that, but it kept up a drizzle for a good bit of the morning. Very nice to see it rain. The frustration is not enough of it. The clouds ar quite heavy looking now, so I’m hoping that it will rain again during the night.

If you aren’t prepared to put up with walking on the side of some roads that are quite busy, then it is easy to have the perception that there very few pleasant place to walk here.

I’m not fully convinced of that. Putting it bluntly, waterlooville is a huge housing estate with what purports to be a town centre, but is actually in steep decline or at least so it appears. But, it has been designed with a lot of wooded areas, most of them not very big, it being possible to walk through them in seconds.

I am wondering that, with the exception of the gapps between the wooded sections, just how far n walk under wooded areas? It might be worth trying to find out.