Roaming with The Robertsons

  Today we decided to make use of our new Chester Zoo membership which allows us to enter a number of other zoos across the country for free once each per year. We therefore headed up to Marwell. They seem to have done a lot of work on some of the aspects of the park since we last visited a couple of years ago. Of course, my favourite part of the day was seeing the giraffes, but we saw a huge amount of other animals including having a chance to see the red pandas being fed. Whilst there, we also treated ourselves to an ice cream sundae at one of the ice cream kiosks, which was delicious! After a long day walking round the zoo, we headed out for tea at The White Swan. This is a carvery situated just next to the River Itchen. This is definitely somewhere I would recommend, the meal was delicious and the view onto the river was fantastic. The following morning, we left promptly to head off back up north. This time we went without stopping anywhere other than to grab some lunch at ...

  We spent most of the start of the week unsure what to do on the Thursday. However, after going to the Historic Dockyard on Wednesday we decided to head to the other museums that we were able to visit on our ticket: the Submarine Museum and Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower . We started off at Explosion, which is a museum situated at Priddy’s Hard in Gosport, a location that used to be a Naval armaments depot. We learnt all about what used to go on at Priddy’s Hard and the various armoury used in the Royal Navy over the years. The museum had also just opened a new gallery telling the story of the coastal hunters in the First and Second World Wars, so we explored this before heading off to our next stop. We tried to time out visit to the Submarine Museum so we could take a quick trip back over to the Historic Dockyard via the ferry (which is included in the price of the dockyard ticket). We decided to go back over first, and had a quick wander round the HMS Victory conservat...

  When we were planning our trip and looking at places to visit, one place that jumped out immediately to Nicole was to go to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard . She was a member at the dockyard when she was younger, and spent a lot of time down there at the weekends in the museums and having fun in the simulator in Action Stations! We therefore decided to take a trip down memory lane. There were two ticket options available to purchase, and the one we bought allowed us to enter all the attractions at the dockyard itself, as well as the other two linked museums across Portsmouth and Gosport. A tip if planning to go to the dockyard or anywhere down at Portsmouth Harbour is to consider using the Park & Ride. This was very cheap compared to paying to park, and a very efficient service. The only limitation is the timings that it runs, and if you want to stay down at the harbour for some tea you may need to move your car as you will otherwise struggle to get a bus back. We decided ...

  When we last went down to Southampton, we visited Longleat Safari Park and, on the way back, we drove past Stonehenge . I said this was somewhere I wanted to visit, therefore we made sure to factor it in this time. We booked online for a fairly early time to visit, and made our way on the hour or so’s journey there. A tip for anyone who visits places like this often, we decided to join the National Trust as you can get entry for free with your National Trust membership despite it being an English Heritage site, which saves you over £40 (as long as you make your membership worth the money over the rest of the year). Once we arrived and queued to get in, we opted to go straight into the exhibition to find out more about the stones and their history, before going up to the stones themselves. There is an option of a bus to take you up Stonehenge, but we decided to walk. The walk is about a 4km round trip, but does allow you to see some of the Salisbury countryside. When we were walki...

  You may have noticed by now that there can tend to be a bit of a theme in our holidays of us at some point doing Go Ape. We have said we would like to have a go at as many of the courses as we can, and also still had some of our gift voucher to spend, therefore decided to tackle Go Ape at Moors Valley Country Park . This is somewhere that Nicole used to go a lot when she was younger as it features a play trail, which is a series of different natural and wildlife themed play equipment spread out through the woods. Although we explored this later on, we started our day off with Go Ape. I would say that this Go Ape Course is probably my favourite so far. They seem to have done a lot of work on it since Nicole last completed it (although admittedly this was probably at least 15 years ago!). They have a different safety system in place than the other Go Ape courses we have done, which involves you being connected to the course at all times once you are on a section rather than havin...

  On the first full day of our holiday, we had planned to meet Nicole’s sister in the afternoon / evening. Therefore, we decided to venture towards the New Forest. Nicole suggested going to Hengistbury Head , which is a sandstone headland that forms part of the Christchurch Site of Specialist Scientific Interest. It is home to an abundance of different birds and other wildlife, and features breathtaking views across Christchurch Bay, the Isle of Wight and Bournemouth. We had a very pleasant walk along the headland and down onto the spit which features lines of beach huts. As it was a very hot day, it was unsurprisingly busy, but we managed to find somewhere to sit to eat our picnic. We didn’t want to sit for too long due to the risk of getting sunburnt, so we soon headed back and into the visitor centre. This featured a very interesting exhibition that tells you all about the history of Hengistbury Head, the wildlife and the future planned work on conserving the headland. Once we...

  This year we once again planned in a holiday to see Nicole’s family down in Southampton at the beginning of September. Somehow we managed again to pick a very hot week and knew from looking at the forecast we would need a lot of suncream and shade. On our drive down, we made the most of our National Trust memberships by stopping off at Baddesley Clinton. This is a house in Warwickshire which is surrounded by a moat and was used as a place to hide Catholics from priest hunters. The story behind this house is really interesting, and the gardens were lovely to walk through to stretch our legs on the long journey. As we made it there in good time, we popped into the café for lunch where I had a cheese and onion pasty and Nicole had a curried cauliflower pasty, both of which were delicious. As well as the national trust estate and house, St Michael’s church is also just a short walk away and worth a visit. After our stop, we carried on down to Southampton and made it in good time ...