Royal Victoria Country Park

Thursday 6th June 2013

As it was forecast to be yet another lovely day we decided to take advantage of the sunshine and went to The Royal Victoria Country Park in Netley on the shores of Southampton Water.  The park comprises of 200 acres of mature woodland and grassy parkland as well as a small shingle beach.  From 1863 to 1966, the site was home to the Royal Victoria Hospital.  All that remains of the hospital  is the chapel which is now a heritage centre

Photo taken in January 1944 (chapel is slightly right of centre)

We found five geocaches on our walk of about 3.5 miles around the park and the last one of the day was our 800th find.  There are lots of caches around the park but as it was a lovely day there were loads of people about so it made it very difficult to look for most of them without arousing suspicion! 

Our walk took us to the hospital cemetery which was constructed to accommodate military and civilian casualties from across the empire from the end of the Crimean War up until the Second World War.  There was a very large rabbit grazing on the grass in the cemetery, at first I thought it was a hare, it wasn't but it was definitely a monster rabbit!  Also on our walk we saw an as yet unidentified very large bird being chased off by a jay flying through the trees.  We are beginning to think it must have been a buzzard because of it's size compared to the jay but it looked very pale in colour for a buzzard.  We saw the usual small birds and I think I frightened a fox in the woods. Dog walkers were everywhere!

Edited at 20.54 -  Iolo Williams on Springwatch has just said that he has seen dark coloured buzzards and light coloured buzzards so maybe we did just see a light coloured buzzard - mystery solved.

Back on the shores of Southampton Water we saw a hovercraft, most unusual, I'm not sure what that was all about. 

Here we have a container ship (looking as ever top heavy - how do those containers stay on there?)  and behind it about to overtake the container ship is the Red Funnel Isle of Wight ferry.  It's good to see that the sea is at an angle again - maybe one day I'll get it right!!

A view of Fawley Oil Refinery (and now the ferry has overtaken the container ship).

 Today's walk was a very pleasant, sunny and warm one with a mix of woodland, lakes, grass parkland and views over the sea.