Portsmouth; Sunday, 23 February, 2014

Breakfast completed I checked out slightly perturbed that the Ibis was charging for luggage storage.

I wandered down to the harbour and headed to the Historic Dockyard to take in the attractions there. First stop was the Iron built warship HMS Warrior followed by the Dockyard Apprentice Museum.

I had a quick look around action stations, which appeared to mostly be a service on behalf of Navy recruitment before taking a pit stop in the Georgian tea rooms.

I headed down to the Royal Navy museum and then the Victory Experience and Trafalgar panorama before heading over to have a look around the main attraction on the site, HMS Victory.

After looking round the Victory I popped next door to the museum for the Mary Rose, which at the time of visiting was about 20% of the way through its five year drying out process, having spent the previous 20 years absorbing a wax polymer to prevent the wood from decaying.

By the time I’d finished in the Mary Rose there was just about enough time to hot foot it down to Gunwharf Quays to pick up the harbour cruise that took a quick look round the harbour, which included a very interesting running commentary from the captain on all the ships from the Navy (and the US Submarine) that were in port.

Slightly windblown from the harbour cruise it was time to head back to the hotel, pick up my bags and then head back to the station and off home.