Village life

Still on the waterfront today, but away from the main arena of the Southampton Boat Show.
Back to Ocean Village, where the atmosphere was just as pleasant, but with more time to be relaxed and savour the heady mix of the clean air and the sea, all bathed in a glorious sunshine.
The same sunshine and blue skies as at the Boat Show a mile away at Mayflower Park, but on a cosy afternoon, much  more peaceful than the frenetic pressures and people at the Boat Show.
Construction work is once again under way at Ocean Village, and I sometimes worry that more development will destroy the ambience of the waterfront village. I am old enough to look back upon the area as I once knew it, then providing berths for regular shipping, later a car ferry terminal, and ultimately a leisure complex fronting the water, with housing, apartments, offices, pubs and bar and the piece d’resistance,, the marina itself. But even that’s changed, and village life around the marina has evolved, and now its character is set to move forward again.

The one constant ingredient is that the marina is home to the Royal Southampton Yacht Club, the building on the left of my Blipfoto, which provides a fitting focus for marina and village life and is a prestigious icon to Southampton’s maritime and seafaring traditions as one of the oldest royal yacht clubs in the land..