On the Sunday/ Monday of the early May bank holiday weekend we headed two hours down the coast to Portsmouth to visit the Historic Dockyard. For a few years now I've been seeing posts from other bloggers and FB posts from friends sharing their great day at this huge attraction. It is somewhere I'd been meaning to take the family to explore for a long time but you know what it is like, life is busy!
I'm so pleased we made time to visit, even though the weather was miserable and rainy and I can tell you from the start, we will definitely be going back. We didn't even manage to get half of the attractions done in the five hours we spent there. Portsmouth Historic Dockyard really is a great day out for all the family - old and young. It offers a unique experience which spans 800 years of British Naval history and as it is situated within a working Naval Base, the dockyard is the only place in the world to see the Royal Navy past, present and future
So what attractions are there?
First off there are two main parts of the Historic Dockyard, there is the main site which houses the Mary Rose, HMS Victor, HMS M.33, HMS Warrior 1860, the Action Stations interactive kids area, Boathouse 4, harbour tours and The National Museum of the Royal Navy. Also at the moment there are a couple of special exhibitions in the museum - 36 hours: Jutland 1916 and Women and the Royal Navy. Looking at the map I wondered if we would have to do a lot of walking during the day but actually the site is really compact and whilst we did lots of walking, as we toured the boats etc, there wasn't actually far to go.
Then there is the Gosport site, which you can access by waterbus from the main dockyard site. Here there is the Royal Navy Submarine museum and Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower. There is also the Royal Marines Museum a Eastney too.