WALKING THE PLANKS..

Self-indulgence alert!! Yes, I know, I`m not so much living in the past as reliving my carefree boyhood each time I go back to Hythe and retrace the steps of those times when life was simple, uncomplicated and above all, safe. Last Saturday, I drove down to Southampton for the football and just as I got to the outskirts of the city, the local radio told me that there were severe traffic problems in the city centre. I was also encouraged to give it a miss because the car park charges at Town Quay have doubled from last season. So, a mixture of avoiding the logjams and saving a few bob on car parking encouraged me to head for Hythe.

Knowing the village as I do, I knew where I could park safely and for free, so I made for Atheling Road and parked outside what used to be Michael ("Johnner") Curtis`s bungalow. Johnner emigrated to Canada years ago, but about ten years ago, I was having lunch in John Madgwick`s fish and chip emporium when in walked Johnner. I hadn`t seen him since our schooldays 60 years ago now and he just happened to be back home visiting his Mum in her Atheling Road bungalow. Having parked, I wandered down to the pier and bought my senior citizen`s return ticket for the ferry - much cheaper than the Town Quay car park - to take me across to Town Quay.

Hythe Pier and Hythe Ferry go back a long way - it was shown on Christopher Saxton`s map of 1575 - although the present pier, 700 hundred yards long, was completed in 1880 and it wasn`t until 1922 that the little train which runs along the pier came into service. It might be a delightful ride, albeit perilously close to the edge, but I always prefer to walk the planks for the whole length of the pier. On the way out to the pier head, from where the ferry leaves , you get the blast of wind from the Solent......

"where the wind off the Solent

flattens one side of you like a plank.."

(William Scammell.

`First Sailing`)

......and you see before you the panorama of Southampton Water, from Fawley and Hamble, to Netley, the Weston Shore and finally Southampton Docks, on Saturday blessed by the visit of three huge cruise liners. The ferry itself sailed very close to the Ventura and it was just like looking up at a block of apartments, like a floating Ocean Village.

But for me, in my wistful moments, the return walk back to the shoreline from the pierhead is one to savour. The little train shunts its way past me, carrying those in more of a hurry than me and I see my first school on the rise above the village. To the west of the pier, the shoreline is much as it was all those years ago with the shipyard, the backs of the shops in the High Street and the sea wall where our back garden ended. To the east is Hythe Marina Village, all neat and modern, all boats and sails, on recalimed land where once cattle used to graze the mudbanks of West Street. As I near the end of the pier, the wind abates but I feel revived from its salt and seaborne tang.

I make my way back to Atheling Road, quite expecting Johnner`s Mum to be in her garden as she always was but, sadly, like John Madgwick`s fish and chip emporium and like my own mother, Johnner`s Mum is long gone too. I take my leave and head off on the 120 mile journey home. But on Saturday week I`ll do it all again and, just like writing this, I know I will feel all the better for it.

Self-indulgence alert over! Normal service may be resumed.....whatever normal might be.