First anniversary festivities in Portsmouth

Somehow, it's already a year since that special-but-very-low-key day last January when Anthony and I were married.

It's fair to say that we have both - separately and together - faced some big challenges over the past year (you don't get to see half the hard stuff in these pages!) but the end of 2007 brought some welcome changes and our new year has started with an incredible sense of love and optimism, and determination to face down anything that comes along (touch wood we don't have to!).

So it was a happy pair of bunnies that hopped in a hire car (a brand new red Nissan Note, with just 9 miles on the clock) and headed down to Portsmouth for our annniversary on Monday.

We stayed in a truly gorgeous B&B just minutes' walk from the beach at Southsea. Spent our days gorging on champagne, chocolate and naval military history (the D-Day Invasion in WWII, all 5,000 boats, sailed from Portsmouth, Admiral Nelson's ship The HMS Victory is in dry dock here, and Henry VIII's famous flagship, the Mary Rose, sank less than a mile from the beach).

We even had sunshine, spending Tuesday walking the beachfront (see piccies below) in our shirtsleeves - no jumpers needed, let alone coats and hats! Has to be said, we found a new candidate for 'worst meal in England' (don't believe all the good spin you read about the Sally Port Inn) but it was a lovely, lovely time in every other respect.

First anniversary is of course paper, so I gave Anthony some replica WWII documents from the D-Day museum shop, and he gave me a book on the castles of britain. This is a cool tradition that we intend to continue.

He's promised me diamonds if we're still kicking around at ages 93 and 95!

The best bits deserve a spiel of their own, so here goes....

Southsea Castle

Said to be one of the last coastal defence castles built by Henry VIII. Squat and square and half hidden in the sand dunes, it looks lots more modern than its 500 years - but it represents perfectly the rapid change from 'building castles to withstand a seige', to 'building castles to withstand seige engines' to 'building castles that just maybe have a hope against heavy artillery'.

It was all locked up until April, but you can see a fair bit by climbing around on the sea-wall. Apparently Henry VIII was standing right here when his flagship, the 30 yr veteran Mary Rose heeled over and sank, right in front of the oncoming French. Not a good day for Brits.

Speaking of the Mary Rose...

We couldn't come all this way and NOT go back into the Historic Naval Dockyards. What's left of the Mary Rose (she was finally found and raised in 1982) is still kept in darkened seclusion, being sprayed with a liquid wax to preserve her timbers.

Her treasures, however, are on display in a nearby shed - and oh wow. The inventory reads like a re-enactor's paradise - leather bound books, purses and bags, shoes, surgeons instruments, bowls, plates and other crockery (both wood and some metals have been preserved in the salty mud!), a urethral syringe (for treating men with the willy pox - eugh!), shields for use in pistol fighting, and countless polearms, their bill hooks and axe heads long since rusted away.

And, of course, those famous, famous longbows - more than 170 all told (only one has been broken since, in a test-fire), about half as thick as my wrist, needing twice Anthony's strength to draw.

Oh, and here's Ants handling an ACTUAL arrow from the boat. There was a chap from the museum doing a show and tell session... made my boy's day it did. Cooool.