For Visiting Anglers: Other Useful Info

Portsmouth is a great location for an angling weekend, and there is plenty for the family too. Southsea is a true English resort town, with promenade, gardens, beach, pier and plenty of amusements. There is a very useful web site run by QHM Portsmouth listing times of boat movements, so you can see when some of the big naval vessels will be coming in and out of the harbour.

This year (2008) the Navy will be holding a three day "Meet Your Navy" event from  25th to 27th July. More details here

The Pyramids is a swimming pool on the sea front with plenty of fun activities inside.

The Sea Life Centre on the sea front has a good collection in its aquariums.

There is an amusement park at the Portsmouth end of the sea front,  it is very naff, but OK to amuse small kids if you are desperate.

The D-Day museum records the important part Portsmouth played in the build-up to the invasion, and many of the boats would have left from this area. You can still see wartime artifacts - a broken section of Mulberry Harbour lies off Sinah Sands, and if you look carefully on the beach outside the Ferry Inn on Hayling Island you can still see the launching ramps where the harbour sections were slid into the sea.

There are many military museums: The Royal Marines Museum, Actions Stations, HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, The Mary Rose, and over the harbour in Gosport there is the Submarine Museum and Explosion! You can take a ferry across from the Historic Ships dockyard entrance.

There are plenty of shops but well scattered around Portsmouth's many local centres. Southsea has some interesting shops, and the new Gun Wharf Quay development has plenty of shops, eating places, night life and the Spinnaker Tower.

You can also take a ferry ride to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, either by hovercraft from the sea front or fast cat from Portsmouth.