Date: Location: Distance: Parking: Lunch: | 20 April 2018 Pennington 5.4 miles The Chequers The Chequers ★★★☆☆ |
Although it is not a big car park the landlord at the Chequers was quite happy for us to park there while we took a gentle stroll around the marshes.
The first part of the walk is along some quite rural tracks and it was nice to see the blackthorn coming into bloom, an early sign of spring.
It was a lovely bright sunny day with a bit of a breeze and we were presented with a lovely view as we approached the moorings at Keyhaven. Here we joined the Solent Way, a well made up path along the top of the embankment protecting the marshes. The gorse growing along the embankment was stunningly bright in the sunlight. There were quite a few waders to capture our attention although it would be nice to know what they all were. We keep saying we must learn to identify them but never seem to get round to it.
We found a grassy bank where we passed a few, or maybe several minutes refreshing ourselves and chatting to a chap who was gathering some earthy material that he said was great for breeding lug worms.
We both had fish pie at the Chequers. It was full of fish but a shame that there was no smoked haddock. We feel this is an essential ingredient for a "proper" fish pie. And another thing .... Wikipedia says shandy is BEER mixed with a soft drink. The barmaid made a ginger beer shandy with ginger beer and lemonade! Now that's just not on, but I was too thirsty to argue.