The day before the Solent Forts Cruise, the organisers received this message from one of the passengers:-
“Having sailed a lot on the Solent waters, I am keeping an eye on the weather for tomorrow, if I don't appear at the right time I will have opted out, don't worry about my payment.”
The words evoked a distant memory of a famous poem:-
It is an ancient mariner
And he stoppeth one of three….
He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he…
The day of the visit dawned fair and 45 of us (but not the previous day’s correspondent) met up at Portsmouth Hard to take the short crossing to Gosport where we boarded a spare ferry for the trip. We followed a Brittany Ferries vessel out into the Solent and observed some of the old buildings on the Gosport shore as far as Fort Gilicker before heading for No Mans Land Fort. The captain circled it twice, once clockwise and once anti-clockwise, so everybody on board got a good view. This proved to be the biggest of the three forts we visited, and quite the commercial enterprise by all accounts.
We then moved on to visit the forts of Horse Sand and Spitbank before returning to Portsmouth Harbour viewing the Southsea shore and Spice Island.
We still had an hour left before the advertised landing time and we wondered how the time would be spent. The answer was that we were taken on a very enjoyable tour of Portsmouth Harbour. Both aircraft carriers were in port and a close view of both vessels was the highlight of the day for many of us.
We docked at Gosport on schedule, caught the next ferry back to Portsmouth and dispersed, having been careful to not endanger any passing seabird!