After taking in a few sights in West Sussex, Kent and Surrey we popped across the border to Hampshire on Friday.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that Portsmouth is only 40 miles away as the crow flies. None of the kids or Jayne had been to Portsmouth before, and I had not been since I was a little boy myself so we packed up a large picnic lunch and went down there and followed all the signs to ‘historic dockyards’.

At first it looked like it might be expensive, when I saw all the prices for the individual attractions, but there was an option to buy a family ticket covering everything for the four of us for £45.

This turned out to be good value. We arrived mid-morning and stayed right up to 5:30 when everything was closing up and went on the Victory and the Warrior, saw the Mary Rose, and the Victory’s sail, went round the Mary Rose museum and a small Navy museum, played with the simulators at ‘Action Stations’ and had a trip round the harbour.

The kids loved it all. Charlie was especially pleased to see the Mary Rose as it was something they had discussed in his history classes at school, but I think he would rather have been allowed on one of the aircraft carriers moored nearby.

I was quite taken by the new building, the Spinnaker, which now dominates the city. Apparently it was supposed to celebrate the millenium but was not built in time. It also ended up costing a lot more than it was supposed to, and is actually still not open to the public due to some trouble with the lifts.

I imagine it is a stick which the local newspapers often use to beat the city council with, but I think it is gorgeous, and I bet the views from the top are stunning. You can see it as you approach the city on the motorway, and wherever you are on land or sea you can catch a glimpse of it.

It reminds me a bit of that posh hotel in Dubai with its sail motif.

Apart from that, my favourite part of Portsmouth had to be the HMS Warrior 1860. Its an amazing craft. The first warship to be built of iron instead of wood, it had sails and a steam engine. The engine was only really used for getting in and out of harbours, and for travelling the funnels would be retracted and the propellor raised out of the water and into a special cavity – disconnecting it from the drive shaft. A typically Victorian piece of ingenuity.

The ship spent many years rusting away, being used as a floating pier, having been stripped of its masts, guns, engines and everything else, but has been restored almost completely. Its a totally different experience to the Cutty Sark with its huge empty spaces.