At the harbour mouth in Old Portsmouth there's a Fuller's pub called the Still & West, where the tables sit almost on the harbour wall and warships and ferries slide past. It's the city's oldest surviving pub — from around 1700 — and used to open at 4am so fishermen at the Camber fish market could get a drink. Across a narrow cobbled street is the Spice Island Inn — three smugglers' pubs in the 1700s and, more recently, two that merged into one in 1991.
Portsmouth is Britain's only island city, sat on Portsea Island with the Solent on one side and the harbour on the other. Locals call it Pompey, and nobody can quite tell you why — even Portsmouth FC's own history concedes the origin "has never formally been identified."
Most visitors base themselves in Southsea, the seafront quarter: miles of shingle-and-sand beach facing the Isle of Wight, Victorian terraces, and three high streets of independents. Albert Road is the no-chain zone. "You won't find a Wetherspoon's or Yates's here," as Rediscover Portsmouth puts it, "but instead a wealth of unique, quirky pubs." Palmerston Road is the smarter end, with boutiques and weekend markets; Castle Road is the pocket of small shops.
On Castle Road you'll find Pie & Vinyl, a record shop and pie café in one, which is the Southsea independent people mean when they talk about Southsea independents. Traditional and vegan pies, mash and gravy, new-release vinyl on the shelves, and an interior with a stuffed fox, an upright piano and album covers on the walls.
For food, abarbistro on White Hart Road has been a fixture since 2003 — wood-fired pizzas, fish and chips, a Sunday roast, and specials like slow-cooked lamb tagine, in an 1780s building. Restaurant 27 holds the only double AA rosettes in the city, its menu changing daily. Over in Southsea, the Florence Arms is known for its Sunday roasts, while on Albert Road the Vaults runs four bars over three floors with a beer bar famous for 50 to 70-odd craft beers.
Staggeringly Good Brewery began in 2015 as three friends' garage project. The taproom is dinosaur-themed, with a retro arcade, live music upstairs and a roller disco.
The Historic Dockyard is the other reason to come. One ticket, valid a year, covers HMS Victory — Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, currently under wraps for conservation but open below decks — the Mary Rose, and HMS Warrior. The Mary Rose sank off Southsea in 1545 and lay on the seabed for 437 years before she was raised in 1982. Henry VIII is said to have watched her go down from Southsea Castle, thrown up the year before against a French invasion.
Gunwharf Quays fills the waterfront next door — outlet shops, harbour-view restaurants, and the 170m Spinnaker Tower with a glass floor 100m up.
Getting here is easy: direct trains from London Waterloo run to Portsmouth Harbour, right beside the Dockyard. From Southsea you can take the world's only year-round passenger hovercraft over to Ryde on the Isle of Wight in about ten minutes.
On the seafront, Canoe Lake still keeps its swan-shaped pedalos. Inland, Victoria Park — the city's first, opened in 1878 — has an aviary and a rabbit and guinea-pig enclosure for children to visit.