TADS #33:Bursledon to Southampton (or A Ramble on the Hamble).

An empty bench looks out over the vast expanse of Southampton Water towards the Fawley Refinery. It's not, you'd think, an image that would captivate. But if William Blake can "see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower" then why can't TADS find beauty in the seemingly quotidian? We certainly didn't find it a problem during our interesting, amiable, and terrain wise very varied, walk this Saturday. One I'd titled 'A Ramble on the Hamble' for reasons that will soon become apparent.

The walk was not too far, not too short, a Goldilocks of a gallivant, and, following a few very well attended walks, and several newcomers, we were back to the fairly hardcore husk of the TADS family. I'd met Adam, Teresa, and Shep in Basingstoke and when we boarded the train to Southampton, Pam was waiting for us on it.

I'd risen early, dropped some Imodium, had tea and Marmite on toast with mum, taken the bus into Basingstoke, had a latte, a vegan sausage roll from Greggs (standard), done The Guardian crossword, and still had time to spare before I'd met my friends. It might have been a mostly shit week (politics, money, anxiety etc;) but there was no way I was allowing this day to be a failure.

We changed at Southampton station (remarking on the outrageous prices in Pumpkin) for Bursledon from where we'd be making our return journey. This time, of course, by way of Shanks's pony. As I often remark on these walks, once we'd arrived in Bursledon I felt as if I was on holiday - and in a nice way too.

We climbed a short, steep hill away from the station. A neatly positioned boat commandeered for use as a flowerbed hinted at the nautical nature of the area but once our elevation increased we were afforded a rather splendid view of Elephant Harbour and the assorted yachts therein. It's so old that Henry VIII's fleet was built there and there are still submerged remnants of it in the river Hamble.

As a river, the Hamble ain't much. It's only 7.5 miles long and flows from Bishop's Waltham out to Southampton Water and then the Solent. It was home to a few shipbuilding yards used for military purposes during WWII but is now better known as 'the home of British yachting'. Do you yacht?

Bursledon (in the Borough of Eastleigh) is home to Hampshire's only working windmill built in 1814 by Mrs Phoebe Langtry and restored between 1978 and 1991. It's also a popular area for growing strawberries. We neither saw strawberries nor a windmill and chances were even slimmer that we'd spot Polly Crook whose ghost is now said to haunt the railway bridge on Coal Park Lane. The legend of Polly is that her love of distilled apple cider and clay pipe caused her to ignite on the spot.

They also filmed Howard's Way (definitely not Howard's End) here and Shep threatened to sing the theme tune later in the day. He came good on that threat and it was, in some small way, his penance for ordering chips in the Ancient Raj in Canterbury two weeks back (something that, shamefully, I forgot to include in that blog).

Bursledon's High Street is a bit different to most. It didn't have any shops on it for a start. But it did have, and I thank my friend Jack for pointing this out,a little triangular traffic island that featured the four cornerstones of British infrastructure. A phone box, a post box, a bin, and a  bench! It also contained some absolutely wonderful old, and really quite grand, cottages. Ones I'd love to live in and almost certainly never will. Property porn is quite a regular feature of these TADS treks.

We passed round Mallards Moor and skirted the edge of a sewage works, my SEEK app was put to use confirming Adam's identification of rowan berries, and we crossed the railway line we'd just travelled along before following the edge of Badnam Copse (near where we saw some electrical equipment fenced off like a menagerie of mechanical animals) into Hamble-le-Rice.

My first ever visit and, lo, a nautical theme again (check the window display of SEA SKY). Unsurprisingly, Hamble-le-Rice was also used for Howard's Way location filming but, far more delightfully, it had that holiday feel, a gold pillar box in tribute to cyclist Dani King (team pursuit gold in London 2012), and felt almost like a model village that had been slightly enlarged.

We strolled down the cobbled main street towards the riverside, had a brief look, and then retired to one of the several pubs that punctuate the centre of HLR. They were all bustling but the cheesily named Beer Grylls had a table in the sun (and it was getting nice and sunny) so we took one. Pam and Teresa's pink gins sparkled in the sunlight and it would have been very easy to stay for more drinks.

But TADS are made of sterner stuff (well, sometimes). We headed past a Farmer's Market, posed for a 'team photo', and in the car park of the Hamble River Sailing Club realised there was no through path so turned back on ourselves, ascended another short steep hill, and found ourselves on the edge of Hamble Common. Woodlands and commons facing directly out to open water are both unusual and also a little magical, and Hamble Common certainly was.

Knobbly, gnarly trees, wide open glades, and strategically positioned gloves peppered our circuitous route through the trees and soon we were presented with our first glimpse of Southampton Water with the oil refinery of Fawley across the other side. As Shep, hopefully correctly, remarked they'd probably not be allowed to build something like that so close to the New Forest (which is just behind it) now.

It was ugly-beautiful rather than full on ugly though and it would be our constant companion for quite a few miles. Shep wanted us to take the ferry over to Hythe which would have meant us staying on the Solent Way (a sixty mile coastal path that makes up part of the phenomenal 5000km E9 European Coastal Path from Portugal to Estonia if anyone ever fancies getting their teeth into something really tough). I'd written a route though, and some spiel (despite saying I hadn't only two nights earlier), so we had to continue along the pebbles and shingle of Southampton Water.

Underfoot, that can get pretty time consuming and take its toll on your legs so when options presented themselves we walked, like toddlers love to, along the top of the wall. At one point we reached a jetty and the options were (a) limbo dance under it - Pam and Teresa or (b) attempt the water jump - Adam, Shep, and myself. A gender split!

I stopped to admire some rust and some green paint with yellow edges (it's the little things sometimes, it's the little things most of the times to be honest) and we wondered what purpose the below contraption served! This industrial and post-industrial wasteland slowly gave way to a more rural feel as long grass blew in the wind in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. The brutal, graffiti covered, concrete block's incongruity somehow only served to highlight the beauty of nature even more.

Plus, we've long loved a juxtaposition. It even inspired me to consider running a rural Brutalist architecture walk. We passed along the not so high really Hamble Cliff and soon came to the Royal Victoria Country Park. Home to a large chapel, viewing platform, museum, and even one of those little choo choo railways kids like to go on.

Both my parents have visited 'the Hamble' many times and have raved about it (it was a large part of why the walk happened). They'd been insistent we should take time to have a look around but, as oft remarked before, that's one of the downsides of these expeditions. There's never enough time to do everything. Teresa instigated a PTADS shore sculpture of shells, we saw a dead crab, posed like eighties rock stars back on the road, and saw a chap with a boat called Ken dodd's dad's dog's dead (he said he'd inherited it and didn't seem particularly proud of the name). I skimmed a stone (I love skimming stones) and, with the relaxing and serene ripples of Southampton Water fading away, we turned inland, ever so slightly, for further refreshment in the Prince Consort pub.

I'm not a huge fan of golf so the mitt of Ernie Els preserved beneath Perspex on the wall didn't particularly impress me. The crumpled Eastleigh Town FC top even less so. But it was a pleasant pit stop all the same and it was nice to rest our legs and catch up on each other's family news before we ploughed on into Netley itself. By this time I was craving a pack of salt'n'vinegar Discos but it seemed unlikely that E FRENCH & SON ABBEY ENGINEERING & SHEETMETAL would be able to furnish me with any no matter how delightfully retro both their font and signage.

The pastel shaded house fronts that followed it were equally, if not even more, pleasing and when we saw two mobility scooters speeding in tandem down a hill (race you to 'Spoons) and got shouted at by some youths on their bikes the village atmosphere was complete. But Netley's chief attraction is neither mobility scooters nor fonts (and certainly not Discos) but Netley Abbey.

Which, of course, was closed by the time we arrived. Something of a pity as it's free to visit. Adam made up for it by stroking a very tame guard dog and I spoke a little about the ruins of the late medieval monastery founded in 1239 for the austere Cistercian order. The hot air I expelled from my mouth into nothing told of a seizure of the abbey in 1536 by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and its conversion into a mansion by the Tudors and how its ruined state once attracted the attention of artists, poets, and painters like Jane Austen, Horace Walpole, and John Constable.

There's even a legend of a walled up nun which was timed quite well as Adam had earlier regaled us of a story about the time Teresa had dressed up as a nun for a fancy dress party. Heading back to Southampton Water the sun was low and the silhouette of the trees beautifully framed two Red Funnel ferries passing each other (Shep seemed inordinately knowledgeable about these ferries). We passed along Westward Woodland Park and into the Southampton suburbs of Weston and Woolston.

The tower blocks that came into view seemed sympathetic to the area rather than crude and imposing and the faded glamour of an Art Deco shelter and resting point was even more splendid. Everyone loved the views, everyone agreed that "dogs are brilliant", and everyone was starting to get a little peckish. As we peeled away from the river we found a former pub (that looked as if it'd been quite rough in its day) that'd been converted into a small convenience store and three of us took a crisp stop.

But did they sell Discos? They most certainly did not. Wotsits, Hula Hoops, and a packet of Worcester sauce Walkers were purchased, and consumed with gusto, as we found ourselves heading into ever more urbanised zones. Woolston seemed to be simultaneously decaying and being gentrified which, I guess, is the way of these things.

A grotty pub (not visited) gave way to a enjoyable looking ice cream parlour and, eventually, to the sight I'd been waiting for. The Itchen Bridge. We walked the stairs up to it so that we, unlike the motorists, would not have to pay a toll. The amount of signs for Samaritans and others trying to coax people out of suicide attempts said a lot about the state of the nation. A nation where suicide is still the single biggest killer of men under forty-five years old and a nation that under the consciously cruel policies of austerity, fit for work assessments, and now the absolute fucking shitshow of Brexit is more divided and unhappy than ever in my lifetime. I even wondered if, perhaps, Brexit was some kind of national suicide attempt. With all the talk of cliff edges, survival, sufficient food and medicine it's certainly starting to look like that. If you supported Brexit during the referendum you were misled. If you still support it now, and you're neither a hedge fund manager nor a cabinet member, you're just a prick.

Civil engineering projects like the Itchen Bridge show Britain in another, far better, light than the likes of Mark Francois, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, and Sajid Javid's absolute commitment to cruelty and unfairness. We've walked (and I've written about) the Itchen (and its brown trout) before but it is predictably a much wider, and different, river here at its mouth and, thus, the bridge has quite a span.

It's high too (92ft/28m). There had been talk of a road bridge to replace the previous chain ferry (known locally as the Floating Bridge) but it wasn't until 1974 that work commenced on the Itchen Bridge and three years later it was done. The opening day was designated a pedestrian only day and the first person over was sixty-nine year old Edith Parks. We followed in her footsteps, looking down on Southampton FC's stadium - which is the correct way to view anything concerning Southampton FC.

Which took us to Southampton proper (no trudging, this time, through industrial estates and past automobile franchises) and it wasn't long before we made our way to The Grapes for our last pub stop. We sat outside as a slight chill descended and I booked a curry for Everest Cuisine round the corner.

Southampton, with a population of over a quarter of a million, is the largest conurbation in Hampshire yet its not a new place. Archaeological finds suggest it's been inhabited since the Stone Age and when Romans conquered the locals in AD70 the name given to the place was Clausentum and it served as a defensive outpost of Winchester.

That was actually on the other side of the Itchen, the one we'd just come from, and it the Anglo-Saxons who founded Hamwic closer to here in the St.Mary's part of the city. Hamwic became Hamtun and later Hampton, giving the county of Hampshire its name, and, following a series of Viking raids and decline in the ninth century, the area was fortified and became Southampton.

After the Norman conquest it became the major port of transit between England's then capital, Winchester, and Normandy and trade in cloth, wool, and French wine thrived. There are, in the city, still remnants of King John's House and Canute's Palace still standing. We didn't see them. We sat people watching and mostly ignoring England wallop Bulgaria 4-0 in a Euro 2020 qualifier on the TVs inside the pub.

In 1338 the town was sacked by French, Genoese, and Monagesque ships under Charles Grimaldi whose gains helped found, and fund, the Principality of Monaco. The Southampton Plot of 1415 (to depose Henry V and replace him with Edward Mortimer, 5th Earl of March) saw Richard, Earl of Cambridge, Henry Scrope - 3rd Baron Scrope of Masham, and Sir Thomas Grey of Heton executed outisde the 1180 built Bargate (that's it in the photo after the receipt)!

Shipbuilding evolved and Henry V's HMS Grace Dieu was built in Southampton. In 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers left from the port for Massachusetts, in 1740 Southampton became a spa town (attracting bathers despite having no real beach), and in the nineteenth century there was huge expansion with the building of the docks that became the major embarkation point for the Crimean War and the Boer War. In 1912 the Titanic sailed from Southampton and, soon after that, it was number one embarkation port again. This time for the Great War.

Notable, and more recent, Sotonians (for that is the demonym) include Mike Batt (whose Twitter account Adam's been telling stories about), Matt Cardle, Charlie Dimmock, Foxes, Benny Hill, John Everett Millais (see plaque below), Chris Packham, and Ken Russell. I used to come here to ice skate, buy jumpers, and attend gigs by Loop, Manic Street Preachers, Transglobal Underground, and Jonathan Richman.

But now I was here to eat curry. Everest Cuisine scored well on TripAdvisor but its entrance looked none too auspicious. We ventured in nonetheless (I had booked) and things got stranger still. Despite looking like a bingo hall from the outside the interior resembled the sort of place you'd buy tickets for an ocean liner. A large staircase opened up into two rooms. The smaller was hosting a private party and the larger a vast airy space populated with birthday parties and disco equipment, thankfully not switched on.

A waiter advised us if we didn't want the buffet (only one veggie option so no) we'd be waiting 30-45 minutes and as we ummed and ahhed over a bottle of Gurkha beer if we should cut our losses he came over and promised he'd get our food in 15-20. Adam wasn't convinced. He didn't even take his much loved blue coat off. But the waiter came good. In fact food was over in less than ten and it didn't even taste rushed. I had a paneer jalfrezi and a chapatti and though they were far from the best I'd ever tasted they certainly weren't bad at all.

We gobbled up, paid up, had an After Eight, and walked (past the Bargate) back to Southampton station where the news came through that Amber Rudd had resigned from Boris Johnson's cabinet of deplorable bullies, incompetent buffoons, and morally bankrupt arselickers. It'll take a hell of a lot more than one defection to bring down this terrible, venal, self-serving Tory party (an extreme right wing coup in all but name and military hardware) but, for now, this was good news and it served to round off what had been a really lovely day.

We hopped on the train (not cheap after so many years of Tory government) and Shep, Adam, and Teresa disembarked in Basingstoke along with some rather drunken pub golfers and Pam and I continued to Clapham Junction where we took separate trains home. It'd not been the most spectacular TADS walk, nor was it the longest, but, in many ways and as commented earlier, it had been just right. Goldilocks again.

Thanks to my fellow walkers for their photos, all the drinks (I didn't buy a single round), and, as ever, their company and friendship. Next month we're off to the Colne Valley for the penultimate walk of the 2019 programme and Shep, as you can see below, is getting excited already. If he can have Bangla with his curry and chips he'll be as happy as he was watching the Red Funnel ferries go by.