retiredmartin

June 2024. Gosport to Selborne.

A break from pubs, on this blog and IRL (as the Mumz say), so if you’re after pubs you’ll need to come back in, ooh, 6 hours time.

Our two-nighter down in Hampshire concluded on Father-in-Law’s 88th birthday with a “no expense spared” breakfast from Gosport Lidl, £5.04 feeds 4,

enjoyed sitting on a bench with this Instagram Dream view of the A32 and our Premier Inn.

I told Michael his birthday lunch was a surprise, as I had no idea where to stop on the A3/M25 trudge,

and randomly broke the journey after an hour at Selborne.

American tourists would love this village as much as the pashminas who visit the gardens and tea shop from Petersfield and Alton. Parked up at St. Mary’s we seemed to have the place to ourselves,

Honestly, if you’ve only got 2 hours here, you’ll need an hour in the eponymous Guide pub and 20 minutes on cartography, comparing the maps from the Coronation of 1953,

to that of the millennium year.

You’ll need 20 minutes in 12th century church. We took 14, several of those staring at the remains of the famous Yew tree blown down in 1990.

A simple gem,

with a Flemish wood carving,

informal museum,

and stained glass windows dedicated to Gilbert White.

Gilbert, regarded as our first ecologist, dominates the village, his 1789 Guide to ticking Selborne’s antiquities the GBG of its day.

White is credited with perhaps the earliest written record of the word “golly”, causing CAMRA problems in South-east Essex some 250 years later; equally improbably, the OED gives White credit for first having used x to represent a kiss in a letter written in 1763.

But Gilbert’s biggest legacy is the steep Zig Zag path behind the pub. You can make it out at the bottom of the drone view.

It delighted our young lads in 2012, but sadly defeated our two octogenarians in 2024.