Project 365: 24-June-2014

Travel Diaries: Exploring The South West Coast- Arundel, Chichester and Portsmouth

While my grandparent are still here, I wanted to be able to show them as much as possible. Yesterday Mr.Boyfriend and i decided that we should show them the nearby things of interest, completely oblivious of the fact that it's Monday. If you don't know this by now - in Britain on Monday museums don't work. This is generally better than not working during the weekend, however it was very unfortunate for my grandparents visit to the Arundel Castle. They took our mistake with understanding smiles and joyfully said that they are going to see it when they come to visit us the next time! Well, this sounds good enough for me!

However, I've been to the Arundel before and I've already visited the castle and the gardens. This time around we visited the Arundel Roman Catholic Cathedral, so as you might guess - I have an opinion about almost everything of any interest in the lovely tiny town of Arundel (is this a town or a village actually?!)

Let's start with the castle and the gardens, since they are the main attraction. The castle is impressive, it looks like a postcard for Disney movie. It's very well kept (there is an actual royal family still living there) and it strikes with it's classical beauty. It's everything one expects when the think of castles - huge towers, long strong walls, huge gardens, the full package! I'm bigger fan of the outside of the castle and the gardens, the inside is mainly wood on wood with some hunting trophies on the walls. The gardens on the other hand are gorgeous, magnificent mazes and pretty exotic flowers. If you have to choose between taking a tour of the inside of the castle, or spending your time in the gardens- please choose the gardens. I promise you won't regret it!

Just outside the castle grounds, there is the Arundel Cathedral, magnificent French Gothic building build in the second half of the 19th century. The style is not random - between the 1300s and the 1400s this particular style was incredibly popular, and during this exact time the Howard family, Dukes of Norfolk and Earls of Arundel, have risen to power in England. The Cathedral is still active, so not to be surprised if your touristic visit is accidentally in the same time as the mesa.

Arundel Castle

Arundel Cathedral

Chichester was our next stop, a picturesque little town, very quite and laid back. I was positively impressed with their nice pedestrian central area, very nice looking and seemingly well organised. Everything being so compact and well organised, it was very easy to find the cathedral - just look up and walk in direction of the huge bell tower. The cathedral is nearly 1000 years old, it dates back to the 12th century. Build in Classical Anglican Gothic style, many cite it as the most typically English of all English cathedrals. The building is indeed remarkable, very impressive in both terms of beauty and construction. Again, it's active place of worship, so not to be surprised by children singing gospels when you go to visit it.

Chichester Cathedral

And last, but not least, on our tour yesterday was Portsmouth. Mr.Boyfriend and I have been talking about visiting it for now more than a year and when we bought a car last Autumn we talked even more about going there for a laid back day out. Well, we never managed to go, both of us were pretty damn busy with everything else in Brighton (work, work, work!) so when we were planing where to go with my grandparent Portsmouth was on top of my list, right after London.

The city of Portsmouth is situated on 3 small peninsulas, but visitors are mainly interested in the middle one. If you plan on driving there I strongly recommend the Park and Ride scheme - just outside the town there is a huge car park where you park you car for just 2GBP a day, where the parking ticket entitles the driver and up to 8 passengers to ride on the designated bus line as many times as they like. It's pretty awesome, I know! The bus stops at three main attractions in each way - Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum, the city center and the Historic Docklands. There are few things worth seeing in Portsmouth and plenty of adorable places to eat - from parks with benches and flour gardens to nice restaurants and coffee shops. We didn't visit Dickens's house A: Because he was just a baby when he lived there for 1 year or so and B: It's closed on Mondays. Therefore, we explored the city center straight ahead, taking by feet the Victoria Park, through the World Wars Monument and looking at the Guildhall from the outside. The park was exactly what I miss about living in main-land - benches, flower patches, fountains, places for kids to play. Really, really liked it.

After a short walk we reached the Old Portsmouth, where it seemed like nothing special is going on. We had Spanish lunch before hitting the main attraction for us - The Spinnaker Tower. With its 170 meter (560 ft) of height, it's pretty impressive think to both look at and look from. There are three floors to be visited, but actually most people are interested in the first one where the glass floor is. That's right, you can look through a glass underneath you feet at 120 meters of height. By my standards this is pretty cool. The tower offers a magnificent view at all of Portsmouth surroundings, including Isle of Wight and the Historic Dockyard. Tower's second floor is coffee shop and the third is just closed balcony with not much of a difference view-wise from the 1st one. Oh, and do make a booking prior to going, otherwise it's quite pricey.

Unfortunately for Mr.Boyfriend we never made it to the Historic Dockyard since my grandparent were already pretty exhausted but now we have an excuse to go back again.