Southampton - Hythe, United Kingdom, 23. April 2023

The world tour is coming to an end at a 'rapid pace'. Today we arrived in Southampton, the actual home port of Cunard ships (besides the legal home port of Hamilton). The last port before Hamburg on Tuesday.

Originally, rain and cool temperatures were forecasted. In the morning, it was still heavily cloudy. However, the sun increasingly broke through after lunch and it became pleasantly warm.

Since we have been to Southampton a few times already, there is not much left that we have not seen yet. A garden area that can theoretically be reached by train in an hour is currently not accessible because a bridge is being replaced on the railway line today. That's why we took the ferry to the other side of Southampton Bay to Hythe. We had to walk about half an hour from the ship to the ferry. The journey is a 'stone's throw' and takes just over twenty minutes.

However, the attraction on the Hythe side is the 'Hythe Pier Railway'. This connects the land and the ferry landing via a 640m long pier. A credit for the railway was granted as early as 1878. A small steam train was built in 1909. The current electric train was then built in 1922. The (street) train has a track gauge of 0.61m or 2ft.

The train belongs to the ferry company. However, they would like to get rid of it. Some volunteers are involved in the maintenance and restoration of the four carriages and the two tractors. But the problem is the tracks and the pier. The train increasingly sinks the posts into the ground due to shaking and beating. This makes the pier uneven. However, apparently the ferry company and the volunteers cannot afford the effort to maintain the pier. Without external funding, the railway will probably not survive much longer.

The town of Hythe has about the same number of inhabitants as Binningen and is quite picturesque. The houses look like what we imagine English houses to be like. There are also beautiful public parks and beaches. Even on Sundays, supermarkets and hairdressers are open here, for example. However, we didn't go shopping and only went to a small restaurant and had tea, cake, and sandwiches.