Day 172 – Prinsted to Hayling Island (Eastoke): 18.0m: 6.4h

John was in London yesterday (watching Major League Baseball at the London Stadium) and has stayed overnight with Ben. They meet Gary at Clapham Junction to join Mike on the train from Victoria to Southbourne. From there it’s a 15 minute walk to our starting point in Prinsted which includes a visit to a conveniently located Co-op to purchase lunchtime sandwiches. It's a pleasantly warm day – warm enough to merit the first appearance this year of Gary’s shorts, but thankfully cooler than the high temperatures of the previous few days. We set off from the Prinsted scout hut at 11:40 to walk around the next bit of land jutting out into Chichester Harbour, Thorney Island (effectively a peninsula). The path sticks pretty close to the shoreline, and there are frequent notices instructing walkers to keep to the path. This is because there is a military base in the centre of the island and on a couple of occasions we need to press buttons on security gates in order to access the next stretch of the path. The other regularly advertised feature of Thorney is its birdlife and, at the end of the first hour, we arrive at a hide where we eat our Co-op sandwiches. Around 90 minutes later, and having crossed the West Sussex/Hampshire border, we’re back on the mainland and continuing westward through Emsworth. After another 45 minutes or so, we reach Hayling Island which is accessible via a road bridge. John’s unkind efforts to persuade Gary that there is an earlier (and very difficult to spot) crossing, plumb previously unchartered depths of Gary’s gullibility. Our objective today is to go down the east side of the island as far as Eastoke in the south-east. Most of the route there takes us through and around residential areas and keeps us slightly inland from the shoreline of the Emsworth Channel. One section is along the side of a field which backs onto the gardens of some quite smart looking houses. The well-tended putting green on one of the lawns distracts John to such an extent that he doesn’t notice the very large overhanging branch of a yew tree until his head cracks into it and he’s knocked to the ground. The rest of us implement a very rudimentary concussion protocol, consisting largely of asking how John’s feeling, but when Gary shows him two fingers and is met with a non-Churchillian response, we decide that we can safely continue. The final part of the walk does include about 15 minutes on the shoreline, but we then move back inland, alongside a boating lake, and into Eastoke where we finish at St Andrew’s Church. From here, it takes us less than 5 minutes to reach the Lifeboat Inn where we have the time for an unrushed pint before a pre-ordered cab arrives at 6:45 to take us to the Farmhouse Inn/Hotel on the eastern edges of Portsmouth. We’re dropped at the bar entrance, so have to walk through a series of corridors to check in at the hotel reception. However, it's not too long before we’re back in the bar for fish and chips, steak pies and a couple of bottles of wine. Not at all bad, and very reasonably priced. Ben resists the temptation of a double sticky to conclude the evening. John, Mike and Gary don’t