Visiting the Spinnaker Tower

In Britain, it is a Bank Holiday weekend and Vee and I have been seeing family and friends. We spent a day visiting my half-brother Chris and his partner Janine who live in a village called South Wonston just outside Winchester. They took us to Portsmouth, somewhere we haven’t been for years and years, and the area by the water has developed out of all recognition.
The location is now dominated by a structure called the Spinnaker Tower. This amazing 170 metre high construction was opened to the public on 18 October 2005. The elegant design and its name is taken from the main sail of an ocean-going yacht.


The tower in Gunwharf Quays

The cost of the tower was £35M and, although some locals have complained about the high cost, much of it came from the Millennium Commission as well as Potsmouth City Council and it has helped to regenerate the whole area.
Chris and Janine don’t like heights, but Roger and Vee are always up for anything and went up to the three vanage points: level 1 (100 metres), level 2 (105 metres) and the crow’s nest (110 metres). It was a beautiful sunny day and the views were excellent. There is so much activity in the bay with lots of vessels of different sizes and purposes.
One of the fun features of the tower is a ‘walk on air’ glass floor on the first level. Although the Austrian-made floor is 60 mm thick, it is so funny to see how nervous people are moving on to it. But’s it’s great to see the 100 metre drop beneath your feet.


At the base looking up
through the spinnaker structure


On the ‘walk on air’ glass floor
looking down (those are Roger’s feet)

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 10:28 am and is filed under My life & thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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