Our port call in Portland/Weymouth today is oddly timed from 11am to 8pm – we guess it has to do with either the sailing distance from Cobh or the tides. Regardless, we have all morning to hang out on the ship, and then watch the lovely sail in to to Portland port today with a fantastic old fort right out on the breakwater.

Our plans today are to just wander, we tried to book a walking tour but the tour guide ghosted us so we are on our own. it looks like an easy town to navigate around, and it is a beautiful but cold day. We’re good. Even better because the city has a free shuttle from the port to Weymouth. We just got off the ship and hopped on the shuttle. 20 minutes later, we were in Weymouth, walking from the shuttle drop off point to cross Weymouth Harbor, which looks like one huge canal. It is a cute and touristy typical British seaside town, with pastel colored buildings along the water, lots of boats and lots of restaurants, cafes and pubs.  One of which we stop at immediately to warm up with our morning cappuccino!

A little bit warmer now, we meander through the town, along the harbor and out to the HUGE beach – and I mean HUGE! You can see how this would be a hopping place in the summertime. The beach is enormous, there is an amusement park on the side, what looks like a sand sculpture competition underneath a domed gazebo type building and an enormous promenade – called the “coastal path” to stroll down.

As it is getting on near lunch time, we walked back toward the town proper, perusing the restaurants, but had really already figured out where we wanted to eat, at Weymouth Rockfish.  They had tons of seafood (of course) and their own beer. Sold! Plus, we wanted to eat light because there is prime rib on the menu tonight…so….we ordered 2 apps – 1 Calamari and throwing all caution to the wind – 1 Whitebait, which were these little fish, battered and fried, sort of sardine size, but that didn’t taste anything like sardines (fortunately enough!).  Our experimenting worked well – everything was really great and the atmosphere there was fun and bright.

Afterward, because of course it is us, we managed to find a fabulous nature preserve around Radipole lake that was only a short walk away from the main part of town. The nature preserve covers 205 acres accessed by these great paths winding through hedgerow and shrubs and forest land, always bringing you back to marshy edges of the lake. This is bird watching paradise with signage everywhere explaining the different birds – which I swear are hand painted. And watch birds we do! There are of swans, geese, cormorants and other birds all over.

Plus the aforementioned paths through with some cool wooden animal statues and wonderful fall colors. A really nice interlude, and totally peaceful, which is amazing because you are literally right in the middle of the city. In some places you can see the road and houses on the other side, but you can’t hear a thing. A lovely place to experience nature and the outdoors.

Towards the end of our walk, it started to rain/drizzle, so we headed back into town and ended up ducking into the same place we had cappuccino, but this time warmed up with wine and beer (of course, it’s afternoon!).  By the time we were finished, the rain had stopped and we reversed our course through town, across the Town Bridge, towards the shuttle pick up point. There we diverged and walked through Nothe park, a lovely green space, ending up at the Nothe Fort which was totally worth a visit. Even though we were late and only had a little over and house before they closed, we made the best of the time and toured as much as we could.

As this was one of a series of forts built during WWI and II to protect Britain, and us being the WWII nuts that we are, this was a not to be missed sight. I didn’t realize (yeah, yeah, we all know I’m history ignorant – I think I really did sleep through all that in school) this was the epicenter of the US troops when they organized for D-Day. But after exploring the tunnels and the armaments and getting lost in said tunnels while reading all descriptive information, we have a ton of history. Plus great views across the harbor and to the port.

Later on in the fort history there was even a nuclear command room there that was built there during the cold war, unbeknownst to the Weymouth public!  Wow!

We’d liked to have a little more time inside the fort to explore, but that’s not happening as the docents are coming around to kick us all out for closing time. Oh well, what we did get to do was completely unexpected and totally fabulous. Our walk back through the park is lovely with all the colors….

….and a bus is waiting for us at the shuttle stop when we arrive. Perfect timing on the whole day. Then it is a night back on the ship, dinner, no show for us, but back to the cabin for a movie and preparing for tomorrow in Southampton when we will be reunited with our friends Roger and Natalie whom we’ve not seen in person in about 7 years.