Day 65 - Saturday 12 October 2002 - Langstone to Fort Cumberland

5 miles walked today

743.5 miles walked in total (11.438 average)

I parked in the Ship Inn car park at 9.45 am to start walking - a later start than usual because of a quick laundrette stop en route!

I walked over the bridge and took a right turn out to the Hayling Billy path.  This path is the old railway route from Havant to Hayling Island and the sleepers have now been torn up and used for the sea defences around Langstone harbour.

It started off very grey, but there were bits of blue sky and the clouds were very fast moving.   The sun soon came out and it was gloriously bright, despite being very blustery and cold.  I almost wished I'd brought my gloves with me.

The path had a slight deviation out to the oyster lagoon, one of only ten sites in the UK which is under close observation because of little terns.   The adults fly back from Africa each April and nest here.  As soon as the fledgelings are big enough to catch their own fish, it's October and time for them to go back to Africa for the winter.  I saw a lot of seagulls and I knew I could hear the familiar "peep peep" of oyster catchers, but I couldn't see them.  Time to get the binoculars out!  I sat down for a while and scanned the shore line and caught sight of half a dozen or so of them.  They're so distinctive with their long red beaks - lovely birds.

Amongst the non-flying wildlife I've seen today were horses, a dead rat and a hare which was quite exciting as it's only the second I've ever seen, the first being while walking the Suffolk coast.

I had terrific views over to Portsdown Hill, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.  I didn't need a map today, as I've already done this walk a number of times, the most memorable being after work a couple of summers ago with my friend, Vicki Wilkinson.  We took a picnic of bread, cheese and red wine and sat on the beach up by the bridge and watched all the lights of Pompey come up.  It was a bit tricky on the way back though - quite dark and difficult walking, especially carrying our glasses of wine!

The Hayling Billy path emerges from behind the Station Theatre, the old Hayling Island railway station, which has been taken over by the Hayling Island Amateur Dramatic Society.  I've seen a couple of productions there - I used to live on Hayling for a year when I first transferred down here from Norfolk.  It's been very surreal and very comforting walking bits of coast I know.  I'm still looking forward to the unknown though and walking parts of the coast I'm totally unfamiliar with.

From the theatre, I was on roads past Hayling's poshest houses out on to Ferry Road and down to the ferry over to Fort Cumberland, where I worked for two years before working at Havant, Cardiff for six months and then back to Portsmouth since Easter this year.

Taking the ferry was also a bizarre experience - I used to commute to work on the ferry!  It's a very busy boat - I counted ten of us on the way over to Fort Cumberland and seven of us on the way back.

There were lots of people out on their boats today.  There were also lots of people in the Ferry Boat Inn where I stopped for my customary pint of cider to finish a walk.  Not many miles covered today, but a great day nonetheless.

Day 64 - Saturday 5 October 2002 - Emsworth to Langstone

3 miles walked today

738.5 miles walked in total (11.539 average)

We've had a fantastic day.  We had to do a bit of shuffling with cars this morning, leaving one at Langstone and the other at Emsworth, but ten o'clock found Andy and I in Emsworth having a big breakfast to set us up for the day.

We followed the footpath out from Emsworth past the ponds and saw thirty or so swans being given bread by a family.  This bread seemed to be a food source for the hundreds of grey mullet that we saw too.   Andy explained that you'll always find them around sewage outfall pipes, but, because water companies in general are having to clean up after themselves following EC regulations, the populations of grey mullet, together with mussels and prawns which also feed on sewage, will decline rapidly.

The path itself was quite interesting - it was great having Andy with me today as he's explained loads.  The path was concrete, but wasn't a dead flat surface - it was lumped together in small mounds, but in very regular shapes.   Apparently, that's because they'd never have got a concrete wagon down to the shore and so sandbags had been filled with dry sand and cement, piled up along the shore and, when it had got wet from the sea, had become concrete.  Excellent!  I was also shown the Gabian baskets, which are square shaped wire baskets filled with boulders.

Just past Emsworth, the path took a detour inland through a churchyard.  However, Andy declared that the water wasn't that deep and we could probably paddle around.  So we did.  For about half a mile in thigh deep water!   It was excellent fun though and provided some fantastic photo opportunities!

When we could, we climbed back onto the wall, over a barbed wire fence (which was a bit tricky) and then through a cowfield.  We managed to avoid all the cowpats - and there were lots of them! - to make it out to another barbed wire fence which we climbed over to get back to the wall.  This manoeuvre entailed clinging onto a tree backwards with all fours and hoping not to fall into the water.  I'm not bringing him again.

Just past this obstacle, we were on the path proper and not flouting any more footpath/ walking rules.  It wasn't far to the Ship Inn at Langstone where we had a well deserved drink and sat in the sun, trying to dry our trousers out.  The boots had no chance!