Things to do in Hampshire

Chichester Cathedral is the only medieval cathedral in England visible from the sea, its elegant spire rising from the West Sussex coastal plain and serving as a navigation mark for vessels entering Chichester Harbour from the English Channel across a tradition extending over eight centuries. The cathedral was founded in the late eleventh century by Bishop Ralph Luffa, who began the current Norman building around 1091, and the subsequent development of the building through Gothic and later phases has produced a cathedral of considerable architectural variety that is distinguished within the English cathedral tradition by its exceptional collection of modern art. The modern art collection at Chichester is one of the finest in any English cathedral. Works by Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Marc Chagall were commissioned or acquired in the second half of the twentieth century in a deliberate programme of placing contemporary creativity in dialogue with the medieval fabric. The Chagall window in the Trinity Chapel, depicting Psalm 150 in a blaze of jewel-like colour, is one of the finest examples of the artist's stained glass outside France. The Sutherland painting Noli Me Tangere occupies a side chapel with quiet authority, a major work by one of Britain's most significant twentieth-century painters given a setting entirely appropriate to its subject. The Norman origins of the cathedral are most visible in the nave, where the round arches and massive piers of the twelfth century establish the fundamental architectural character of the building. Two unique Romanesque stone reliefs set into the south aisle wall, depicting the Raising of Lazarus and Christ's arrival at Bethany, are among the finest pieces of Norman figure sculpture in England and rank as important works of art in the wider European tradition of Romanesque carving. The detached bell tower, the only surviving detached medieval cathedral campanile in England, stands in the close to the northwest of the cathedral and adds a further architectural note to a close of considerable historic charm. The nearby Pallant House Gallery with its outstanding collection of twentieth-century British art makes Chichester one of the most rewarding destinations in the south of England for those interested in art across the centuries.

Compton Bay on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight is one of the finest beaches on the island, a broad expanse of sand and low cliff backed by the distinctive coloured sandstone and clay cliffs of the southwest Isle of Wight coast where the Cretaceous and older geological formations are exposed in a sequence that makes this section of coast one of the most productive fossil localities in southern England. The bay is part of the Isle of Wight Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and provides excellent surfing in the Atlantic swell that reaches this exposed west-facing coast. The cliffs at Compton Bay and the adjacent Hanover Point expose a sequence of geological formations ranging from the Wealden clays of the earliest Cretaceous through various younger formations, and the coastal erosion that maintains the beach by supplying new sediment also constantly exposes new fossils from the Wealden. Dinosaur footprints are among the finds from the Hanover Point outcrops, and the beach is a well-known locality for Cretaceous plant fossils, wood fragments and occasional vertebrate remains. The beach faces west and southwest and receives swell from the Channel approaches that provides consistent surfing conditions, particularly in autumn and winter when the westerly weather systems are most active. The coast path along the clifftop from Compton Bay provides excellent walking with views of the Needles to the north and the west-facing coast of the island extending southward.

Freshwater Bay on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight near Freshwater is a small chalk cove beneath the Tennyson Down that provides one of the most dramatically situated beaches on the island, the white chalk cliffs of the bay contrasting with the dark sea in a composition characteristic of the chalk coast of the island's southern shore. The chalk arch of Arch Rock at the eastern end of the bay and the smaller formations at the clifftop provide the geological features that have made Freshwater Bay one of the most photographed sections of the Isle of Wight coast. The association with Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Victorian Poet Laureate who lived at Farringford House above the bay from 1853 until his death in 1892, gives Freshwater Bay a literary dimension of considerable importance. Tennyson walked the chalk down above the bay daily for nearly forty years, his regular presence on the clifftop commemorated by the Tennyson Cross that marks the highest point of the down. Many of his later poems were written during these years at Freshwater and the landscape of the southwestern Isle of Wight provides the setting for his imagination throughout this period. The walk from Freshwater Bay along the Tennyson Down to the Needles at the western tip of the island is one of the classic Isle of Wight walks, the chalk ridge providing excellent views of the English Channel on both sides and the Needles chalk stacks visible from considerable distance as the walk approaches the western end.

The Needles are among the most iconic coastal landmarks in southern England: three serrated chalk stacks rising from the sea at the westernmost tip of the Isle of Wight, their brilliant white faces contrasting sharply with the green water surrounding them and the striped red-and-white lighthouse perched on the outermost rock. They are the end result of millennia of coastal erosion acting on a chalk ridge that once connected the Isle of Wight to the Purbeck Hills of Dorset across what is now the English Channel, and they represent one of the most visually arresting geological features on the entire English coast. The chalk that forms the Needles was laid down beneath a warm shallow sea around 70 million years ago, built up from the compressed remains of microscopic marine organisms. The same chalk, tilted by later earth movements to stand nearly vertical rather than horizontal, forms the brilliant white cliffs that flank the Needles on either side. The result is a dramatically striated cliff face where different chalk layers, separated by thin bands of flint, are exposed in vivid cross-section. The viewing point above the Needles at Alum Bay is one of the Isle of Wight's most visited attractions. A chairlift descends from the clifftop to the bay below, where the multicoloured sand cliffs behind the beach display over twenty distinct geological layers in shades ranging from white and yellow through ochre, red, grey and even black. Collecting sand from these cliffs is no longer permitted, but the traditional local souvenir of coloured Alum Bay sand layered in glass bottles has been made and sold here for well over a century. A former Royal Air Force base on the clifftop above the Needles houses the Needles Old Battery, a Victorian coastal artillery installation dating from 1861 that was later used as a rocket testing facility during the Cold War. The battery is managed by the National Trust and contains a tunnel through the cliff to a searchlight post that provides one of the closest views of the Needles stacks available without taking to the water. Boat trips from Alum Bay operate seasonally and allow visitors to pass directly beneath the lighthouse for a perspective unavailable from the land. The lighthouse itself, automated since 1994, has guided ships through the dangerous passage between the island and the mainland since it was built in 1859. A previous lighthouse stood on the clifftop above, but fog so frequently obscured it from ships at sea level that a more exposed position was chosen. The current structure has become one of the most photographed lighthouses in Britain and features in countless images of the English coastline.

The New Forest National Park in Hampshire is one of the most unusual landscapes in England, a large area of ancient woodland, heath and common land that has been managed as a royal hunting forest since William the Conqueror established it in 1079 and whose survival to the present day in a region of intense development pressure represents one of the most remarkable acts of landscape preservation in the country. The park covers approximately 570 square kilometres and supports the largest area of lowland heath in Europe, habitats of international conservation importance for the species they support and the ecological processes they maintain. The forest has been grazed by ponies, cattle and pigs through common rights that date from the Norman period, and this continuous grazing pressure is responsible for the characteristic open, parkland character of much of the woodland and the maintenance of the heathland by preventing tree and scrub encroachment. The New Forest ponies, a semi-feral native breed that has lived in the forest since at least the medieval period, are the most visible and most beloved wildlife of the park, small herds and solitary animals encountered on every road and path through the forest. Their legal right to graze the common land is older than any existing legislation and they are given precedence on the forest roads. The ancient woodland of the forest, including the old-growth areas around Bolderwood and Rhinefield where enormous veteran oaks and beeches of several centuries age provide habitat for rare woodland species, is among the finest and most ecologically important in Britain. The dead wood habitats associated with veteran trees support a specialised community of fungi, invertebrates and birds found in very few other British woodlands. The forest towns of Lyndhurst and Burley provide visitor services and the extensive cycling and walking route networks make the New Forest one of the most accessible national parks in England.

Paultons Park in Hampshire is one of the most successful family theme parks in Britain, a well-maintained park near Romsey that combines a wide variety of rides, attractions and themed areas with the high production values and attention to detail that have made it consistently popular with families with young children. The park's most celebrated section, Peppa Pig World, is the world's first theme park dedicated to the internationally beloved animated television character and has become one of the most visited attractions for pre-school and early primary-age children in the country. Peppa Pig World opened in 2011 and has been extended and refined since, its themed environment of oversized buildings, ride vehicles and settings from the television series creating an immersive experience for children who know and love the programme. The rides, including Daddy Pig's Car Ride, Peppa's Balloon Ride and the Rebecca Rabbit Ride, are designed and scaled for very young children, their gentle motion and familiar theming providing an accessible first theme park experience for children who might find larger rides overwhelming. The wider park beyond Peppa Pig World contains rides and attractions for a broader age range, from toddler-appropriate spinning rides to the more substantial rollercoasters and water rides that provide challenge for older children and teenagers. The park is consistently praised for its cleanliness, its well-maintained infrastructure and the quality of its guest services, and the compact layout reduces the walking distances that tire young children at larger parks. The location in the New Forest fringe area of Hampshire provides an accessible destination for families from across the south of England, and the combination of Paultons with the New Forest itself makes for an extended family visit of considerable variety.

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is one of Britain's most extraordinary maritime heritage sites, a working naval dockyard that has been at the centre of Royal Navy history for centuries and now contains a collection of historic ships, museums and exhibitions that brings the story of British sea power to life with remarkable immediacy. The dockyard has been building, maintaining and housing warships since the twelfth century and still operates as an active naval base alongside its heritage function. The centrepiece of the dockyard's historic attractions is HMS Victory, Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805, the engagement at which Britain's naval supremacy over the combined French and Spanish fleets was decisively established and Nelson himself was killed by a French sharpshooter. Victory is the world's oldest commissioned warship still afloat, maintained in a form as close as possible to her 1805 appearance, and the experience of walking the gun decks, squeezing through the low-beamed passages and standing at the spot where Nelson fell is genuinely moving. The ship's scale, and the realisation that hundreds of men fought and lived at close quarters within this wooden hull, is difficult to comprehend from the shore. Adjacent to Victory in the dockyard's Number One dry dock lies the Mary Rose, the Tudor warship of King Henry VIII that capsized and sank in the Solent in July 1545, carrying most of her crew to the bottom with her. Rediscovered in 1971 and raised from the seabed in 1982 in one of the most ambitious underwater salvage operations ever conducted, the Mary Rose now occupies a purpose-built museum where the preserved hull and over 20,000 artefacts recovered from the wreck are displayed in extraordinary detail. The collection includes the personal possessions of crew members, weapons, navigational instruments and everyday objects that together compose the most detailed picture of Tudor shipboard life available anywhere in the world. HMS Warrior, the world's first iron-hulled, armoured warship built in 1861, is moored alongside and completes a trio of ships that span nearly four centuries of British naval technology. Museums within the dockyard cover the history of the Royal Navy from its earliest days, the development of submarine warfare, and the story of Portsmouth itself as a naval town. The dockyard is a full day destination and represents extraordinary value for the number and quality of the historic ships and museums included within a single admission.

The Needles are three tapering chalk sea stacks at the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, their brilliant white rock catching the light against the sea in a way that has made them one of the most recognised and photographed coastal landmarks in the whole of Britain. The name was originally applied to a fourth, much taller and more slender stack that collapsed during a storm in 1764, and the remaining three stacks preserve the pointed profile of the eroded chalk ridge from which they were progressively detached as the English Channel cut further into the western end of the island. The lighthouse at the seaward end of the Needles has guided vessels through the passage between the Isle of Wight and the mainland since 1859, its characteristic red and white painted tower one of the most photographed of all British lighthouses. The lighthouse was automated in 1994 and the keepers' cottages that once housed the resident lighthouse families are now used occasionally for visitor events. From the Needles headland above Alum Bay, the lighthouse appears to balance impossibly on the outermost chalk stack, its exposed position making clear why the service conditions for the resident keepers were among the most demanding in the Trinity House service. The chalk cliffs flanking the Needles at Tennyson Down and Headon Warren display the dramatically tilted geological structure of the western Isle of Wight clearly. The chalk beds, which lie nearly horizontal across much of southern England, are here tilted almost vertical by the same geological forces that created the Purbeck anticline on the mainland opposite. The result is that the layers visible in the cliff face are seen edge-on rather than face-on, producing the cliff pattern of near-vertical bands of different chalk and flint varieties that gives the western coast of the island its distinctive geological character. The Needles Pleasure Park and the chairlift at Alum Bay provide access to the cliff viewpoints and the coloured sand beach below, and seasonal boat trips from Alum Bay pass beneath the chalk stacks and around the lighthouse.

Yarmouth Castle on the Isle of Wight is the last castle built by Henry VIII as part of his coastal defence programme of the 1540s and represents an interesting evolutionary step in English defensive architecture, being the first English castle to be built with a square rather than round plan as a direct response to the increasing dominance of artillery in siege warfare. The castle was completed in 1547 and its squat, low-profile design reflected the understanding that tall medieval towers were vulnerable to cannon fire and that a lower, more compact fortification could resist bombardment more effectively. The castle occupies a small site on the western edge of the harbour at Yarmouth, a picturesque small town on the northwestern tip of the Isle of Wight that is the terminus of the Lymington to Yarmouth ferry crossing. The castle's position beside the harbour entrance was intended to command the approaches to the Solent and the Channel beyond, and in combination with Hurst Castle on the Hampshire mainland opposite it formed a pair of defensive works guarding the western approaches to the Solent in the same way that Southsea Castle and Calshot Castle guarded the eastern channels. The castle is managed by English Heritage and the interior provides a good picture of how a small Tudor coastal fort was organised and used. The gun platform and the remains of the domestic accommodation within the small ward give a sense of the garrison life at a minor royal fortification. The views from the castle over the Solent, the Lymington river estuary and the Hampshire coast are excellent. The town of Yarmouth itself is one of the most charming on the Isle of Wight, its small square, the remains of the medieval pier and the George Hotel providing an attractive backdrop to the castle visit, and the ferry crossing from Lymington provides one of the most pleasant ways of reaching the island.