Southampton Part I

 February 2019

My first impression of Southampton certainly wasn't anything special, the bus dropped me off near the port, and I can't say I was particularly impressed.

Hefting my bag, I walked the twenty minutes to my accommodation, a small studio with a little private bathroom, and a tiny two element stove. There was no washing machine, so I would have to go to a laundromat, and it wasn't in a particularly nice area, but I felt safe.

The next morning I nervously turned up to an open construction site in an area called Queensway. I was given waterproof clothes, a high-vis jacket and a hard hat, and put to work. 

Perhaps if the team had been friendly, things might have been a little different, but they weren't. The work was hard manual labour, mind dulling, exhausting, and wet. It mostly consisted of digging and wheelbarrowing, with the occasional math, graph paper and photography thrown in. I hated it. Below is the most interesting feature I found on dig, though I've forgotten what it was. Medieval drainage system possibly or hearth, I clearly didn't care enough to remember!

The problem is, it was paid work, and I kept hoping it would get better (spoiler, it didn't). When Ben arrived, we talked out what to do. Neither of us liked the city very much, but I had paying work. Looking back, it seems so obvious we should have left, but where would we have gone I suppose? We decided to stick it out for a couple of months, as the contract wasn't too long. We would save money as we did, and keep looking for something else. It was logical. It was also awful. 

Ben soon found a temp role working for the council with families in difficult situations, and it was as depressing as it sounds. Added to that, no one wanted to rent to us for only 2 months (the minimum is usually six, or most usually, a year). Finally we found a room where we could pay monthly, but it was for a reason. The landlord was pretty shady, the house a dump, he had been renovating the bathroom when we viewed it, and assured us it would be done when we moved in. It wasn't.

 The contractor had skipped town on him, and the landlord ended up half-arsing the job himself, leaving us with a shower that ran boiling hot or icy cold - it literally couldn't be used. 

We signed up to the gym and went every morning so we could at least shower, miserable, but I suppose we were keeping fit. Then there was also the great bedbug disaster of 2019, but it's too traumatic to talk about, so let's leave it in the past. Suffice to say it was the nail in the coffin that led to us eventually leaving Southampton. 

It wasn't all awful of course, we were in a new place and that meant weekend adventures! 

We weren't far from the New Forest National Park, which led to lots of lovely day trips. Our first adventure was to Brockenhurst.

The village is famous for the wild ponies that wander through it and the nearby woodland, and we had a wonderful time exploring the trails. 

Look, a wild pony! We didn't get too close, but enjoyed it hanging out from a distance.

The New Forest is ridiculously pretty, and some of the walks through it felt like we were in Middle Earth. Here is one of my favourite places we stumbled across, where we stopped for our usual sandwich picnic. 

The town of Brockenhurst itself was small and cute, but nothing to write home about aside from the wandering ponies (and donkeys apparently, though we didn't see any). However the bakery we stopped at certainly was. I bought a hybrid donut-croissant, stuffed with custard, and it was one of the best things I've ever eaten.