Nyaaaart Hootle Blart

For one of my days out I chose the 11 1/2 mile bike ride via Fareham. We checked in on Poppy to see if she wanted to come with us but her sister's boyfriend was looking after the house in his dressing gown and said she was visiting grandparents.
It sounds a long distance but with all the swing-park rest stops, train and ferry transfers and lunch break, it really isn't that bad. The third train took us to Fareham which wouldn't normally be interesting without the defunct railway line to Gosport which is now a bus route and bike path.
We'd planned to take our shirts off but the keen breeze never made it feasible but at least it was sunny. One thing I like doing is big sine-wave curves on the bus route because you can see buses coming from miles away but I didn't actually check before crossing the road and a bus blarted me.
Later some cop cars screamed past us at 90, I guess they're allowed to use the bus route as well. I also found a large potato at the side of the road, it's the little things you remember.

First Swing-park is Bridgemary. I assaulted the assault course, of course, and ended up playing some kind of chase game with some younger girls while Bud found a really long stick to help some local youths get their green boomerang out of a tree.
The next park is by Gosport Leisure Centre and ice rink, it too has an assault course but is quite small. It is the parkly precursor to lunch at the Sailmaker Carvery which also has a swingpark in the back garden.
I filled up on big lumps of meat and we cycled on through the green tunnel which I don't like so much because we met wasps there last autumn on a blackberry-fest. Leesland Park has a lot of open space and some loud youths who have a great future in the welfare industry but a very good wooden play fort and a decent zipline: mostly by now I was wondering why there was so much hooting going on.

Sea fog was making its way inland and we could hear foghorns aplenty.
Nearby is Broken Park but it seemed to be repaired, not that we stopped to see as I needed the toilet again, as is usual by this time on the journey. I hastened to Morrisons where I crashed into a parked car in my haste.
Cockle Pond playpark was mistily obscured and I was glad I'd brought my top as it was suddenly cold and the air was full of moo-ings of all octaves as the orchestra of foghorns competed for dominance of the harbour entrance.
I still used all the exercise equipment but got batted by the spinning things on the roundabout so we grumped to the ferry and waited ages for the captain to get the nerve up to cross the water.
As if by magic, the air cleared as we reached civilisation and I was happily cycling through old Portsmouth to go and say hello to Jof when my foot missed the pedal and I crashed to the ground in the middle of the road and some old bloke behind me kindly didn't run me over.
But I'd scratched my hand and bumped my knee and shattered the left brake handle so we limped back home at slow speed, with severe loss of confidence and 1 working brake, using only pavements.
The man in the bike repair shop said it'd be £12 to replace.
Later, some Yellow Politicians came to our door and said vote for us, not those Blue guys, they're sneezebuckets.
Half an hour later, some Blue Politicians came to our door and said I hope you're not going to vote for those Yellow Poo-brains, looks like we hold the balance of national power, as I deserve.