The Battle of Trafalgar

Well if you have read the title and are still reading this then well done

The weekly challenge on UKScrappers this week was to use history as a theme, use border punches and 4x6 photos.

In 2005 it was the Trafalgar 200 Celebrations all year and lots of it was based in Portsmouth. On June 28th it was the International Fleet Review, the Queen bobbed around inspecting the vessels all lined up in the Solent. I lived in Eastney in Portsmouth at the time at the other end of the sea front and so we set out on foot at 6am to get a good spot. We bought a beach tent, chairs and enough food to last all day and night.

Louis was 4 and Ali was 9 months.

Loving the tent. Sunshine so the tent was empty of belongings.

Loving the tent to snooze in. Raining. so the tent was full of belongings.

The whole seafront filled up so quickly, we were so glad we got there early and enjoyed the whole day, and had the best view and the best beeline to the ladies. I know, so very English.

Ali was so good, he sat in the buggy all morning, rolled about in the tent for a bit, had lunch and then a nap and sat in the buggy all afternoon, had his tea, rolled about in the tent for a bit and went to sleep for the night in his buggy (I love 9 month old babies).

Some of what we looked at during the day.

In the evening Son et lumiere ( I know there is an accent there but not on live writer there isn’t!) recreated the battle with lights, I wish I knew then what I know now about cameras and had a better one, but hey, here is an overexposed one of Louis, the green splodges in the background is the show.

There were fireworks later and then we walked home exhausted. Louis did superbly all day making friends with everyone, not being annoying, and then he still managed to walk parts of the way home when I couldn’t piggyback him anymore.

We also went to the International Festival of the Sea the next day in the dockyard, we were pretty tired as you would think so we did lots of sitting around soaking up the atmosphere and seeing the live actors and artists. We had been to the previous Festivals of the Sea so we had seen a lot of the ships before.

I will leave you with a couple of shots of that.

Bunting!

To be fair you can usually see Matelots fighting in Portsmouth.

Cannon Fodder.