Keith and Dee took Daisy for a walk on the heathlands bordering the New Forest while I caught up on a day or so of the blog. Actually, fitting in the blog typing is very difficult.
When they returned we set off in the van for Milford on Sea. A stunted corn crop seemed to be struggling in the salt air, while whole families leaned over the edge of a footbridge with little parcels tied onto strings, trying to entice the large crabs to grab on and be caught.
A natural barrier between the river mouth and mud flats and the ocean, called ‘The Spit’, runs over two kilometres out from the shore. The nearby sea defences to stop the waves inundating the coast have changed things and the gravel comprising The Spit is no longer being replaced by natural waves and currents. Instead, enormous quantities of gravel have to be added now and then to maintain the environments that The Spit creates and the protection that it gives to the tidal mud islands. The stones were a challenge to walk on but lots of people were out enjoying the pleasant weather and the holidays, and lots of dogs, and especially Daisy, were racing everywhere. Dee and I tasted the sea kale that miraculously manages to grow out there, and it was delicious with a salty tang which I hope is due to the salt in the air and not to the dog population and its habit of marking territory.
At the end of The Spit sits Hurst Castle, part of which was built by Henry VIII from 1541 to 1544, as a coastal fort to defend The Solent; the stretch of water between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. H-rust is Danish for ‘a race of waters’, which the Solent certainly is when the tide turns. 
It was modified in the 1860s, when extra barracks and rooms were added, and the whole castle was used for defence during WWII. No shot was allowed to be fired from here, because, with its role mostly being in intelligence and communications, it was important that it was not known to the enemy as being of strategic importance. A walled fortress, the old central section has two functional wings, which now house interesting collections of memorabilia, including a theatre used in WWII, information about weather tracking, and the history of lighthouse keeping in the area.
There were often very high seas in winter, and debris and ‘treasure’ would be washed up from shipwrecks. The children of the few families stationed here in the early twentieth century would head for the beach to look for pickings and their parents would go too, just to make sure that they were safe. One oral history recalled the boy’s father bringing in a case of tobacco, dividing it with other adults and then burying his share so that any official inquiries about it would not reveal anything. Unfortunately, when the coast was clear, the father couldn’t find the spot and, after much digging by the whole family, had to give up in disgust. I presume that there were laws about who owned cargo that was washed ashore, prohibiting the scavenging of goods.Once we got to the old sections of the castle, the round towers and spiral stairs transported us to a different age. In earlier days the Keep rooms had been divided up by partitions, but now each floor is open around the central pillar.
Dee was pleased to see how much progress has been made in cleaning and opening up the castle to the public, because she often played here as a child, mostly in dank rooms full of rubble and rubbish. In 1642, when the Civil War broke out, partly because King Charles I went ahead with demanding a ship tax that was not approved by parliament and was thus not constitutional, the parliamentarians seized Hurst Castle. Charles I was under guard in Hampton Court but he escaped and headed for the Isle of Wight where he sought refuge. In 1647 he was taken prisoner and kept in grim conditions at Hurst Castle, with his only exercise being a daily stroll along The Spit. Eventually in 1649 he was taken back to Windsor Castle for trial and was executed.We supported the volunteers by buying some afternoon tea, and I tasted tiffin, which is like our hedgehog, but a lot richer and a bit stickier, being made with melted chocolate rather than cocoa. The walk back along the spit seemed to be a lot longer, with the stretching of the calf muscles registering as the gravel moved under each step. The tide had been going out, so the islands were more than just grass tips emerging above the water. We had watched a small boat struggling to make headway against the waves and the rapid tidal current near the castle, while pretty fleets of yachts raced and others simply ambled about amongst the mud flats. Dee told us of her sailing days; of races and trips to France.
On the way home we called in to see Dee’s daughter, Erin, to say ‘hello’ and to borrow her bike for our next day’s outing. Erin made us a cup of tea and we loaded her bike and helmet into the van for the trip home. Wilbur rang to say that he would be late. He is a team leader working on the British steam car which will make an attempt on the World Steam Record in America in a few weeks time, and testing is at a crucial stage. Fred Marriott set the record of 121.57 miles per hour in the Stanley Brothers Rocket at the Florida Speed Week in 1906. Wilbur and his team aim to travel at 170 mph on the salt flats at Bonneville in the United States. The car weighs 3 tons and is 25 feet long. It requires teams of firemen and medics to be on standby when it is being tested but to date the engine only has been trialled, with the vehicle itself not moving, and problems are still being ironed out.The chimney team were back on the job, with a man with a very broad accent and a cheery manner and a virtually silent partner reaching the stage where a new flue had to be installed just when Wilbur appeared. He has been working as the labourer on this job so he assisted again. The top of the chimney has been re-bricked with a pattern of slightly slanted bricks making a decorative edge and the whole thing just peeping over the roof line and now visible from the front of the house.
After a late tea and lots of discussion of what we have learnt on our trips, how we planned and who we met etc etc, we fell into bed with the intention to rise early for a bike ride on the Isle of Wight.
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