Postcard from Portsmouth - towers and Victory is ours!

The seafront at Portsmouth is dominated by the Spinnaker Tower, a pointy structure that you can go up, and up, and up, and look out over Portsmouth. This is great fun, as the's nothing like an observation deck to get people arguing about where exactly Cowes is on the Isle of Wight.

But the big attraction is the glass floor. One section of the floor is what one hopes is very thick, very strong plate glass. A popular pastime seems to be plonking your toddler on the glass floor and getting a photograph of them 100m above the ground before they look down and either get distressed or convey complete disinterest.

Slipping my shoes off (presumably they are worried about high heel damage) I take my turn and stand there, looking down. It is fairly impressive and does produce a little flip flop in the stomach. The glass is remarkably clear and the size of the floor means that you could be fooled into thinking you were standing on nothing atop a sheer drop, held suspended for a moment like Wile. E. Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon. Of course this is sheer fancy but when the darker parts of your imagination start conjuring up questions like 'would it just be a sudden CRACK! and plunge, or would there be a splintering and a desperate scramble for the edge before you lost a very quick tussle with gravity, meeting an undignified shoeless end as a very wide, but very thin, corpse.

A glass floor is no place to take on nausea unless you know you are going to win but it really is hypnotic to stand there, in your socks, dreaming of flight.

The Tower is part of the redevelopment of the seafront. It's great to visit and perhaps coolest of all is that they stamp your hand and your entry fee is good for access all day, so if it's cloudy in the morning you can come back later, or at sunset. Unfortunately the stamp on the back of the hand does not entitle you to free squash and biscuits, as it did in the school discos of youth.

But the highlight is the Historic Dockyards and, of course, H.M.S. Victory. It's amazing to think that something so small could have had such a pivotal role in shaping the fate of a nation. The organisers really do a good job of conveying the crowded conditions aboard ship by letting on hoards of tourists at once - when we were there there was a rugby team doing a tour. It's amazing to think that this is the actual ship, not a replica or mock up, that fought in the Battle of Trafalgar, truly an age of wooden ships and iron men, at least I presumed their heads were iron, judging from the number of times I nearly concussed myself on the low ceilings.

I can confirm that the is a plaque marking the place were Nelson fell and that next to it is a museum official presumably stationed there to frown with disapproval if anyone stretches themselves out on the deck for a photo opportunity. Disappointingly, the brass plaque is flush with the deck, meaning that one cannot do the 'I'm not surprised, I nearly fell over the damn thing myself' joke legitimately. It does not stop anyone though.

Prior to visiting Victory we toured H.M.S. Warrior, a Victorian sailing and steam warship that never fired a shot in anger. It was intended as a deterrent and it certainly scared the hell out of me. Huge and black, if one opened one's curtains in the morning to see that thing moored up in the bay, the was nothing to do but accept that you were now part of the British Empire and try and flog the sailors fruit at vastly inflated prices.

The Warrior had a crew complement of over 600 and was armed to the teeth with cannons and marines with guns and cutlasses. Today one can hold weddings on board and I am pleased to report that every firearm and blade, even the belaying pins, are securely locked down and cannot be used in a brawl, leaving only the traditional weapons of fists, bottles and cake.

What the Warrior had that the Victory did not was engines, meaning that it had stokers. Down here one seemed to find the only place on a warship more horrible than the gun deck. Iron men on an iron ship in this case I think. Another advantage on the Warrior was the guide, a tremendously enthusiastic bloke who could describe every knot and rivet and had a salty story and yarn for every yardarm. Always a pleasure to see an expert enthusing, what started off with a question ended up as a fascinating twenty minute impromptu tour of the aft of the ship to a crowd of about a dozen.

Finished off with a harbour tour. The Russians were in port, their battleship a rather more cold war shade of grey than the jaunty grey of the Royal Navy. The Russian ship bristled with weapons and was moored up next to the new Frigates commissioned by the RN. Sleek, stealth and with only one small gun showing, the RN ships somehow exuded a quiet menace, like a bloke so tough he doesn't have to prove it. Again, if you open your curtains and one of those is in the bay, it's time to dust off your best trousers and treaty signing pen and negotiate the sale of your mineral rights and fruit.

As evening fell, the car park for the Isle of Wight ferry was jammed! Just what is the attraction of the Isle of Wight? Is it the weather? Is it the people? Surely everyone queuing to make the crossing wasn't doing so to visit a loved one in clink? Maybe some sort of obscure law means that you can do something on the IoW that you can't do on the mainland, like eat unpasteurised cheese or stick turbot up your arse or something. Obviously now I am going to have to make the crossing one day, although early, as I have seen too many movies where the tourists miss the last ferry back to the mainland and end up on the wrong end of a Christopher Lee.