Husband and I had two weeks off back in September and so we trundled off to the Solent again. He went first taking our boat to Gosport and I hopped on the train the next day and met him there. I can’t tell you how much I love going to the Solent and the areas around there. I love love love Portsmouth and I love how getting from Gosport to Portsmouth is a little ferry ride away via the Gosport ferry. I love that if you live in Gosport and you have no interest in boats (but why wouldn’t you?) your day to day life still depends on getting on a boat to get you quickly from one side of the harbour to the other. Its the same in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, but more about that later.

Here I am in Gunwharf quays. It was really hot when I arrived and stayed like that for a couple of days which was nice.

I do love a sunset picture with boats. Taken from the “Still and West” pub.

On the pontoon at the marina. This dress came into its own in the hot weather. I can’t tell you how much I love it. And the bag is proving to be pretty damn useful too.

Lovely night time view of the Spinnaker tower form our boat.

We spent about 4 days in Gosport/Portsmouth and then we moved onto Cowes. Now this is the bit that is a major achievement for me. Although I have sailed a couple of times now at Eastbourne, sailing on unfamiliar waters is a different story. It was only a 2 hour journey from Gosport to Cowes but I was still quite anxious. There is just so much traffic out on the solent. There are boats everywhere! Big ones, little ones, fast ones, slow ones. EVERYWHERE! You have to keep your eye on the ball at all times. You can be sailing along quite happily and if you’re not paying attention you look around and there’s a bloody great container ship coming up behind you. However we do keep an eye out so we saw the bloody great container ship when it was still a way off, but boy do they gain on you fast.

I sort of relaxed into it after a while and started to take some pictures.

I think taking pictures helps take my mind off it all, so I do tend to take a lot…

I Love this one above.

And below is our little boat in her berth at East Cowes marina.

She’s usually pretty much one of the smallest boats in the marina, but we love her.

Can you spot her in the above picture?

Just realised I have many many more pics I want to share so will break this up into two or more posts.