Tag: portsmouth historic dockyard

Uncategorized, Where'd I Leave It Wednesday

Where’d I Leave It Wednesday: Portsmouth Historic Dockyard – The Mary Rose

theblindscribe

Happy Wednesday everyone! I’m back with another Where’d I Leave It Wednesday, today’s will be the next part of my time up in Southampton/Portsmouth and more specifically for today’s story, my trip to the Mary Rose Museum at the Historic Dockyard.

The day began with meeting Henry VIII in the middle of the street before we’d even gotten to the Dockyard. It was the strangest feeling, my family and I had just been talking about how places like Hampton Court Palace had people dressed up as Henry VIII and his queens, then I look up and right in front of me is Henry VIII. That was a pretty surreal start to the day. I got a photo with him, this Henry VIII actually sounded northern which was interesting, then he asked where I was from and I told him. His answer was “this must be a busman’s holiday for you lot then”….. I didn’t get it but my family laughed. Henry VIII said he’d see me in the Mary Rose Museum and then headed off for the Post Office.

When he said he would see me again, he meant it.

At the time I just thought I might see him in passing because he must be somewhere in the Museum. What I didn’t expect was Henry VIII jumping out at me multiple times.

The first time was on the middle level, the level that you enter the exhibition on – I’d just seen the Mary Rose herself which is a chilling experience and we were heading towards the lift to go down to the bottom level. There were a few other groups in the area as well. Then the lift opens and who steps out but Henry VIII and he of course spotted me immediately.
“Pretty girl, I told you I’d see you here”. Yes, he did, though I wasn’t expecting him to step out of a lift towards me.
He spent some time having conversations with me and some of the other people there, one of them was actually called Henry – nice coincidence.

The next time I saw him, or rather he saw me, was the other end of the bottom floor where he was stood with his hands on the bar in front of him and he was looking out over everyone going in and out of the different floors.

The final time I saw him, he snuck up on me. I was on the top floor of the exhibition. In this part you are able to look over the railings at the Mary Rose but I couldn’t see very well that way. So, I had knelt on the floor to look through the glass at the Mary Rose at the better angle from me. I’m there minding my own business when from down the end comes:
“Olivia, what are you doing on the floor!” bellowed at the top of his voice. I instantly stood back up, it was like being shouted at by a teacher at school. I’m sure my eyes were as wide as saucers, then he took me over and showed me how the map has raised parts on it that I could feel with my fingers and helped me to visualize parts of the ship that couldn’t be brought up.

That’s it for this story, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Where'd I Leave It Wednesday

Where’d I Leave It Wednesday: Portsmouth Historic Dockyard – HMS Warrior

theblindscribe

Happy Wednesday bookish people! I’m back with another Where’d I leave it Wednesday and today’s story comes from this past weekend when I went up to Hampshire to visit some relatives. On the day after we travelled up we went to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard – which I really enjoyed by the way and this is some of the things that happened along the way.

The day started off early. I had barely slept the night before, I was in a hotel and I rarely sleep the first night in a hotel anyway but that night there were trains passing by constantly, there was a nearby clock tower going off every hour and my Father’s snoring was louder than a school fire alarm. So I was running on about two hours of sleep and I was in the shower just after six in the morning. We had a breakfast delivered to our hotel door, there was a pot of fruit, a pastry and a yoghurt with a bottle of orange juice.

By half past nine we had met my great aunt and her husband at the train station and so commenced an hours trip to the dockyard. It went faster than I thought, usually on trains I read but there wasn’t enough room so I ended up looking outside the window at all the blurring colours. It looked like a watercolour painting.

When we got to the Dockyard we sat for a a moment to get ourselves comfortable again after the train trip and had a delicious cup of coffee. I am biased, I like coffee even though I shouldn’t drink it for a few reasons. Then the day properly began. While having our drinks out of the window we could see the masts of a huge ship, it turned out to be HMS Warrior.

My journey on this ship began uphill, literally I had to walk up a steep ramp to get onto the ship. The ship had been kept pretty much as it had been when it was being used – or so the men walking around told us. It was very interesting to see the difference between how the sailors and the officers would eat, sleep and generally live. The men on board, telling us about the history of the ship, was dressed how the sailors would have been at the time which added to the whole effect of being on the ship.

The problem with the ship was the rope ladders. If you’ve ever been on this ship, or one similar, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Small wooden steps that you have to climb down one foot at a time with your feet turned sideways, instead of banisters there is rope that swings and moves all over the place as you climb down them. There were many sets of these stairs and they just kept going further down into the ship. It was down near the bottom where I slipped. My foot didn’t get a good enough grip and it fell off the step, I only stayed on the ladder because I gripped so hard to the rope on the side. It shook me up quite a lot. I was happy to climb back out of that ship pretty soon after.

After that we went to the Mary Rose exhibition and I made a friend in Henry VIII… but you’ll have to check back next Wednesday for that story.