If you’re on England’s south coast and looking for a fun family day out, I highly recommend visiting the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and the Gunwharf Quays Shopping Centre. It’s a great mix of history and shopping.

I met my sister and niece for a girl’s day out at Gunwharf Quays, an outlet shopping center with designer brands at reduced prices. We found plenty of opportunities to tick off items from our shopping lists. The center features mainstream and designer names like Paul Smith, Burberry, Timberland, Hobbs, and French Connection. There’s also a multi-screen cinema and the Spinnaker Tower, a sail-shaped tower offering views over the entire harbor area. The complex is conveniently located next to Portsmouth Marina and is easily accessible by train, with Portsmouth station just minutes away, or by car, with an underground car park right beneath the shopping center.

After scoring some designer bargains, we stopped for lunch at one of the pubs on the quayside, overlooking the yachts in the marina. There are plenty of restaurants to choose from, but we liked the traditional look of the Old Customs House pub. It’s housed in one of the renovated old brick buildings from the dockyard days and serves moderately priced but nicely presented pub food. The pub has several different rooms upstairs and downstairs and an open bar area with lots of people enjoying drinks or meals.

After catching up with family news over lunch, we visited the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, just a few minutes from Gunwharf Quays. You could easily spend a whole day here if you wanted to see everything. There are different ticket options – you can either see all the attractions or choose to visit just one, along with the museums that are open to all. Since we only had the afternoon, we chose to visit the main attraction, HMS Victory.

HMS Victory is probably the most famous ship in the Royal Navy. It was the flagship on which Vice Admiral Lord Nelson led the British Fleet to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where he was killed by a French sniper’s bullet. You can see HMS Victory on quieter days as part of a guided tour, and when you buy the entrance ticket, you’ll be given the tour time. On busier days, there’s a free-flow system where you can walk around the ship, and guides are available to tell you about different aspects of the ship.

The guided tour is well worth it. Our guide was an ex-naval gunner, giving his last tour before retirement. He took us around the different decks and cabins, explaining how the seamen and officers lived, ate, and fought on the warship in the 18th century. We relived the Battle of Trafalgar, which took place off the coast of Spain. The battle resulted in the death of Lord Nelson, who was a national hero and was brought back to London for a state funeral, his body preserved in a cask of brandy. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside the ship, and I didn’t want to risk getting a telling-off from an ex-naval gunner with shiny shoes.

We learned about the cannons and ammunition and how quickly the British Navy could fire them due to constant training at sea, compared to the French and Spanish, who were often blockaded in port. Our guide kept the talk entertaining with explanations of everyday expressions originating from naval life.

Most seamen were ‘pressed men,’ forcibly taken from pubs or the streets to join the navy, so discipline was harsh. Punishment was by lashes from a whip called the ‘Cat O’nine tails,’ and when it was brought out of its bag, it was known as ‘letting the cat out of the bag.’ After the whipping, the surgeon would treat the wounds with salt, the most readily available antiseptic, leading to the expression ‘rubbing salt into the wound.’ The scars left on the seaman’s back would stay with him for life, making him ‘a marked man.’

Meals of meat stew and ship’s biscuit were served on a square wooden platter, which could get monotonous but might be more than a poor man would get at home, leading to the term ‘three square meals.’ The raised edge of the platter was known as the fiddle, and if someone had more than his fair share so that the food touched the edge, it was known as being ‘on the fiddle.’

I thoroughly enjoyed our tour of HMS Victory, brought to life by the stories and anecdotes from everyday naval life recounted by our guide. Afterwards, we only had a short time left before the dockyards closed, so we had a quick look around one of the Naval museums with more information about HMS Victory.

If we had bought the full ticket, there were several other attractions to see, such as:

– HMS Warrior: A 19th-century Victorian ironclad warship powered by steam and sail, where you can take a guided tour to hear about life for Victorian seamen.
– The Mary Rose: A Tudor warship, the favorite of King Henry VIII, which sank off the coast of Portsmouth in 1545. The ship was brought to the surface in 1982 and has been undergoing preservation ever since. The ship is currently out of view while further restoration is done, but the museum and artifacts are on display.
– Action Stations: A hands-on activity center that brings to life the skills and activities of the Navy, such as climbing walls and flight simulators.
– Harbour Tours: A 45-minute boat tour of Portsmouth Harbour with commentary, where you can see some of the modern warships and Naval vessels moored here.

The tickets are quite expensive at £24 for adults and £19 for children for a single attraction, or £39 for adults and £29 for children for an all-inclusive ticket. However, if you can allocate half a day for a single attraction or a full day to see all the attractions, you’ll find it good value, as there’s a lot to see and it’s very well explained and presented. With the all-inclusive ticket, you can also come back within a year to see any attractions you missed the first time.