Riverside Holidays

Hamble is around 15 minutes’ walk away from Riverside: as well as being one of the leading yachting centres in the country there are boat trips, waterside restaurants serving mouth-watering Hampshire produce, cobbled streets and the annual regatta Hamble Week in summer. Netley’s Royal Victoria Country Park and Burlesdon’s Manor Farm Country Park are both nearby for woodland and riverside walks. Burlesdon Windmill and the Burlesdon Brickworks Museum are a few miles outside the village, and there are over 4000 subterranean exhibits to see at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in nearby Gosport. The Hamble Valley, stretching along the Solent and Hamble rivers between Portsmouth, Winchester and Southampton, has walking trails of all lengths. The 15-mile Strawberry Trail takes in Hamble and Burlesdon villages and for more bracing types there’s the 60-mile coastal trail the Solent Way which passes through the Hamble Valley. More faint-hearted souls can amble from Hamble to Hill Head along part of the route, or take the simple 4.5-mile stroll of the Hamble Rail Trail. City sightseers can catch a bus at Hamble to Southampton, Hampshire’s biggest city and with stacks of green spaces and parks: Southampton Common has festivals and fairs and circuses in the summer, as well as the Hawthorns Urban Wildlife Centre with wildlife garden and café. The city also has the longest surviving section of medieval walls in England, with an archaeology museum, God’s House Tower, set in one of the tower walls; there’s the Solent Sky Museum for aerial enthusiasts and the Southampton Maritime Museum for nautical ones, as well as the Titanic Museum and Titanic Trail around the city. Stay on into evening to explore the Ocean Village and Town Quay areas, or go clubbing or fluttering at Leisure World with its night clubs, casino and bingo. There’s more old city sightseeing in historic Portsmouth and Winchester, both within driving distance of Riverside; get the kids giggling at the laughing kookaburras of Marwell Wildlife in Winchester and let them scramble around the HMS Victory and HMS Warrior 1860 at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. They’ll also squeak to go to Peppa Pig World in Hampshire’s Paultons Park, and to splash around at The Rapids leisure centre at Romsey.