Day 175 – Southampton to Exbury: 15.1m: 4.9h

After comfortable nights for all, we meet outside Roost just after 7 o’clock. This gives us more than enough time to walk to Town Quay, locate the departure point for the ferry to Hythe and wait for the first service of the day to come across from the other side of Southampton Water. This leaves Town Quay at 7:30 and the crossing takes almost 15 minutes. The pier at Hythe stretches nearly 800 yards and we walk along this rather than catch the narrow gauge railway which connects the pier head to the shore. By the time we’ve then continued a short distance through the town, it’s almost 8 o’clock which is opening time at Adam’s Café. We arrive there just as the doors open and settle down for breakfast. Ben opts for a bacon sandwich (which arrives with a healthy looking salad and departs with most of it intact) while the rest of us choose what is advertised as the ”small breakfast” with a side order of black pudding. Suitably refuelled, and having been bid a fond farewell by the eponymous Adam, we’re under way again at 8:40. It’s another warm and dry day with a welcome breeze. Having walked through Hythe, we’re able to go along some country lanes and through woodland for almost half an hour before we reach the boundary of Esso’s Fawley Refinery and have to return to the main A326. Shortly afterwards, John and Ben take a turn off the main road whilst Mike and Gary continue along it. On this occasion it's the John and Ben combination who have chosen the longer route (included in the day’s official mileage) but, having returned to the A326, they are only 5 minutes behind Mike and Gary when the team reunites at a junction near Fawley village by the New Forest School. We walk into Fawley and through All Saints church, and reach the shore of Southampton Water to the north of Fawley Power Station. It’s low tide so we’re able to walk close to the shore as we pass the power station and get back to the Solent at Calshot Beach. Applying the pier principle, we decide that a left turn to Calshot Castle would simply constitute an out and back walk of half a mile each way rather than going round a promontory, and instead turn right to Calshot itself. Between here and Lepe, there are a number of private estates and permission hasn’t been obtained to continue a coastal route along this stretch. We therefore make quite a significant inland diversion, north to Ower, west through Stanswood and then back south to the coast at Lepe. This was where we were originally intending to finish, but it’s not quite 12:30 and we’ve only walked about 12.5 miles. And so we decide to continue another 2.5 miles to the next easily identifiable point for a cab pick-up, St Katherine’s church at Exbury. Initially, this involves quite a bit of shingle. It also involves chats with a guy who is in the midst of a continuous walk from Dover to Land’s End and, at one point, asks Gary whether the four of us are “ex forces”. An easy mistake to make! The final stretch is along a country lane into Exbury. John manages to order a cab, and we arrive at St Katherine’s at 1:15. John has asked the cab to take us to Southampton Central station. Ideally, both he and Mike would like to catch a train at 2:15 because it’s a direct service for them to get to Oxford and Reading respectively and the next service at 3:15 has been cancelled. Ben and Gary are more relaxed on timings because trains to London leave every half an hour. When the cab arrives just before 1:30, the driver says that we could be delayed by road works and traffic in Southampton, so suggests taking us to Southampton Airport Parkway which will avoid the city centre and from where trains leave nearly 10 minutes after leaving Central station. It proves to be an excellent suggestion. Not only do we arrive at Parkway in good time for John and Mike to catch their train, but Ben and Gary get an earlier train than would have probably been the case from Central. The only very minor downside is that we have no time, or indeed venue, for customary pre-departure beers/ciders.