We had decided to stay two nights and do a bit of catching up but also exploring. It seems it’s wise to book weekend berths in this vicinity, so we’d been advised by the marina that if we didn’t book the two nights we may be disappointed…. so we did. Julian got up quite early and beetled off to Aldi which we had spotted on our walk. Also came back with a paper and an almond croissant 😋! I did some “ having a lie in” and some writing. I’d noticed they had washing machines here so I sorted the rest of the laundry that needed doing. They were token machines which you had to buy from the office. The usual laundry antics followed. I put the token for the washing machine in the tumble dryer slot ( it really wasn’t obvious!) then tried to put the other token in the correct slot, but it just kept coming out again . Then as usual had to go to the office and confess my failure. So a nice chap came along with a key and a 🔨 hammer. He retrieved my token and then gave some button a big bang with his 🔨 and …Hey presto it worked! Laundry and shopping done, we made sandwiches and set off on our day out. The hop on hop off bus stop was on town quay so two minutes away. We paid our money and were given little blue plastic headphones to plug in. We sat upstairs to get a good view. It went all round Poole and then onto Bournemouth telling us about the great and the good however tenuous their connection with the town. Julian had old aunts that lived in Bournemouth and so had memories of the place… but a long time ago. I had never been and was amazed at the size of the place, the massive buildings and the volume of people in it. The sheer number of boats alone in Poole harbour must be in the tens of thousands. This area must have been absolutely thriving and beautiful in the Victorian seaside explosion era. The architecture of the hotels and huge departments stores is very noticeable from the top deck of s bus. Still decadent but getting tired and run down underneath. The beach area was busy with the pier still obviously very popular. We got off here to change buses . We decided to eat our sandwiches in a little park down there with chines ( streams) running through it. I tried to block out the vision of all the present day bustling population, and imagine the Victorian ladies in their dresses wandering slowly along taking the air! Their was obviously some competition going on as there were hoards of scantily clad, seqiuned, spray tanned,( some very orange!) young people ( mostly girls) . Troops of them were in the park practicing gym type stuff. We sat on a park bench and ate our sandwiches. It was all so very different from the lonely places we’ve been recently. I have to say we were not sorry to get back on the bus… although the ear phones weren’t working anymore. Julian felt a bit sad that it wasn’t quite as he had remembered it. The bus returned via Sandbanks, a notoriously wealthy area, lived in by people with lots of money. Not particularly nice in my humble opinion. Big sprauntzy residences all a bit tacky and squished into a small area. But maybe I like quiet things too much. Finally we returned along the sea front which was great and it was fun watching all the antics of people learning to kite surf. Such a great area for fun on the water. I’m really glad we did the bus trip and it’s so interesting to see the diversity that surrounds us.
What I learned today…. to read washing machine instructions more carefully…..
Angelique 