A free day is somewhat of a luxury, there was absolutely nothing I had to do, and the grizzly looking weather had not dampened my enthusiasm to search for an adventure. The Isle of Wight was a possibility, or even a likelihood as I had already grudgingly concluded that I was just not wacky enough to book a random flight and go somewhere out of the blue.

Then, over a period of hours, it dawned on, I didn’t need to look so far a field, I’ve lived in Southampton for 5 years and a had pretty varied experience too, but there is so much of the City that I’ve never seen. When you reside in the student Bermuda triangle, you can easily become trapped in Highfield, Portswood, City Centre axis of evil. With a City documented as covering 49.84km, I’d be surprised if you’ve covered even a tenth of it in your experience, and no, getting on the wrong bus doesn’t really count.

I’ll concede that I’ve been to Shirley NHS walk-in centre and the Post office collection and even as far as Millbrook for the Megabowl and 5-a-side caged football, so I definitely wanted to go the other side of the water. My plans to just open the map up, close my eyes and point would probably lead to the prospect of sitting in the drizzle in a field. As much as I like my own company, I need some, and a bit of inspiration. After watching an uninspiring Saints go down 2-1 to Derby at home, I was surprised that between us John and I could muster anything.

After a reassuring cup of tea ex-co-worker Michelle joined us for the banter, we had a destination. I am lucky enough to have the benefit of the car in this expedition, which would ultimately be more unorthodox on foot. Do my carbon footprint a favour and recycle this paper after you’ve read it.

Weston
We were going to Woolston, the adventure begins. The sun came out in partial celebration. We crossed the itchen by bridge (not the Itchen bridge) venturing into the unknown. Here we struck our first major problem, by default the unknown means you don’t know where you’re going, and we were driving by committee, which becomes problematic when one of you abstains. In this trip I was hoping to achieve a number of unique lifetime experiences, being reassured by the presence of the Woolston CO-OP was not one I’d anticipated.

It turns out we were actually going to the Weston shore, which was a few bendy roads and confusion further on. Weston is an area of Southampton trying to emulate the success stories of St Mary’s, as John reliably informed me, that the area is currently part of a Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) running until this year; £1 million of government funding has been ploughed in, with another 1.5 coming privately. In fairness, the only reason we even knew it existed was because he’d written an essay on it, proof, if needed, that some parts of Southampton are unseen and unheard.

In entering what has been labelled a "deprived" area, we rocked up expecting to see fly-tipped sofas and needles (not the chalk ones the Isle of Wight had promised). The reality was different – the SRB planned to build a proud, safe community around an area that had previously thrived in the 1930s to 1950s. Some of the facelift it has clearly received harks back to that golden age; the shelters have been refurbished and you can just imagine the overly-clad holiday makers scuttling out. Although I doubt they had Ice-Cream vans in the 1940’s, we bought three and took a stroll down the windy Weston parade and caught a glimpse of the new lighting and traffic calming measures. In fact, you can now cycle from here all the way to Brighton, which doesn’t seem very calm.

Legend has it the Viking King Canute attempted to command the tide to halt here in Southampton, it might have been a good place, the low tide reveals a seaweed covered quicksand mud-fest. I can’t imagine actually swimming here, but on the plus side, if you are looking to see a different side of Southampton this is a good spot with extensive views of the docks, sea breeze and a beach.

The beach itself is shingle, so the chances of making a sand-castle are minimal, and furthering our disappointment either they were the wrong type of stones or our skimming ability has disintegrated completely. The SRB also gave birth to a playground, and our sense of adventure was overriding, until an aggressive old man waded over and said "you’re ****ing ruining it for the kids" right in-front of his grandchild. If I’d had my wits about me I would’ve pointed out that his language would probably have a more harmful affect on her, rather than our innocent fun-seeking.

Our Weston experience was tied/teed off with some Pitch & Putt, also part of the regeneration. It was quiet considering it was now a sunny weekend, the docile attendant charged us a very reasonable £1.60 each to play and £5 deposit on the clubs; I could emulate Tiger and Colin in my own city. The greens were surprisingly as well kept as the ‘state of the art’ toilets in the car park. John quickly returned there after chipping a hole in one effort off a tree and onto a 4x4. You don’t have to be that good to enjoy it, as Michelle and I finished a crushing 16 over par.

The fun didn’t stop there, returning my fellow travellers to known elements of student-ville, planning for my next adventure began. In the bright lights and big city, Southampton has it’s own West End, and as it turns out, it just isn’t as glamorous.

West End
The one man to grasp the vision was Banjo, he hopped in, mp3-ed the tunes of CSS and we stopped for petrol, the fumes filling the sense that Southampton was our oyster. The apathetic attendant killed the mood; "So, we’re heading out of the city, where should we go, anywhere?"

(shrugs). "Literally, anywhere – what would you do?" "Stay here." "You think we should just turn round and go home." "Yes".

We were searching for culture, trying to travel. I explained to Banjo that it was like going round Ireland with a fridge, at which point he realised that he was my fridge and was possibly offended that he was now could be referenced as large and immobile object rather than ‘cool’.

This wasn’t our first shared travel experience in Southampton, we once got lost looking for the Royal Victoria Park, left doing circles in Hamble.

From that harrowing experience we learnt following brown signs is always a good idea. We ended up at Lakeside Country Park, which is right next to Wide Lane. Having both worked there we were surprised that never taken the next entrance. We found it was also the home of Eastleigh Lakeside Steam Railway – we seems like an ideal place to bring kids, not that many students have them. Which was one drawback, the other being it was closed.

Still early evening there was decent enough light to walk around, the car park was empty, although we’d potentially stumbled across a dogging hot-spot. The park is scenic as you’d expect and the most notable feature is obviously the lake. With only a couple of fishermen around the most prominent feature were the beautiful greyland geese, who from nowhere managed to instantly produce ten plus geese-lings just by standing up.

Our worry over a stray sock and whether there was a drowned body once attached to it was short lived. We were starving. In search of food we just drove straight for West End, and decided to stop at the first pub we saw and happened across The White Swan, which was closed and more importantly half way through demolition.

There was were groups of kids on the street, but that made it no different to any other part of Southampton I’d ever seen. We finally reached The Master Builder, after a U-turn realising I’d just gone past a pub. It promised "Good Food" but right now, I’d settle for anything.

It was family pub with greying occupants, which one can infer is typical of the area. With less of the hurly-burly of city life, no music but a genial atmosphere the setting was a good catalyst for what between us is very natural conversation, film, football, the state of the family, putting the world to rights. We had long enough to talk, with everything on the menu made from scratch. It was definitely worth the wait, but holding for drinks too, there was significant concern the wine was still be treaded in the kitchen.

The food and the hospitality were both great, in fact Banjo was enamoured with the Spanish waitress enough to slip out an audible, "I love you" as we paid the bill. Which was greeted by a soul-crushingly non-response "Oh." It was time to take the fridge home, he’d clearly been on too long and was emitting harmful things into the environment.

An abrupt halt, but there ended possibly one of my best days in Southampton, in places I’d never seen before. While you live here, make the most of it, discover something new and don’t just rot in Portswood.

cityguide,adventure,banjo,weston,srb