Read my St Alban’s travel logue.

You will find Southampton eighty miles southwest of London in the country of Hampshire. It has a simple etymology. Ham is an old Anglo-saxon word meaning home, ton means farm, so it literally means the house by the farm. The south part was added to distinguish it from other houses by farms. it is a relatively young city only gaining city status in 1964.

My journey to Southampton started at Waterloo where I caught the 11.05 SWR train. The journey was uneventful except I saw a Hells Angels’ clubhouse as I was coming into Southampton. Obviously they would have chapters in the UK, but who knew they would be based in Southampton?

Anyway, I arrived at Southampton Central station at 12.22.

Southampton is not a cathedral city, so there wasn’t an oversized church for me to look around. However, it is a port city, so my first stop would be the seafront. At least that was the idea – after seeing a nice mural and climbing uphill – like a magpie I was lured away by shiny things. Or rather by the city centre.

I saw the Guildhall and walked through the East and Central parks.

I tried going into the city’s art gallery and museum, but the former was closed for refurbishment and the latter charged a £15 entry fee. Salisbury’s museum charged £10 and as I was too cheap to pay that, you know damn well that I was too cheap to pay £15.

Seeing as it was nearing 1pm, I decided to get some lunch. As I was by the coast, I had to get fish and chips. Luckily, Sib’s fish and chips in the city centre sold £6.45 fish and chips for lunch. They also sold a battered deep-fried Mars Bars.

While I was tempted, I did have one of these in Edinburgh and it left me feeling sick. The caramel became far too rich.

Fish and chips in hand I headed down to the seafront through the city’s old town and I saw the Bargate and walked along the old city wall.

I also browsed Decathlon to buy knee pads to aid my yoga endeavours, but they didn’t have any. This made no sense. It was a massive Decathlon. How do you not have kneepads? I was not a happy pony after that. I also looked around a Barnado’s charity shop where I almost bought a jacket which was supposedly large, but stopped a couple inches short of my wrists when I tried it on.

It was onto the seafront and then I saw St Michael’s church.

I could eat my lunch in here! Oh wait. No, I couldn’t. It was closed. Opposite it was Southampton’s oldest museum – the Tudor House.

But that had a £10 entry fee, so I said a hard no and continued to the seafront. But I did see Jane Austen’s house.

Initially, I tried going to the West Quay, thinking it would be the seaside, but was disappointed to find that it was just a shopping centre. My search for the seafront would continue. This is when I followed signs for the Town Quay, but, en route, I found the River Solent, which was the perfect place to have my fish and chips, even with all the squawking seagulls. Thankfully, none of them stole my food.

And how was the fish and chips? Well they were fresh so they were instantly better than Portsmouth, but not as crispy as the fish I had in Southend or Lichfield. Although it was a decent-sized portion especially for £6.95. Now I wanted to walk along the riverfront, but I couldn’t do that as there was a bloody great ferry port in the way – this was the town quay where you could get the ferry to the Isle of Wight. There was also a luxury yacht dealership.

But then I saw signs for the Ocean Village and I knew I would find a sandy beach front. After more walking, did I find golden beaches and blue water? No. I discovered that the Ocean Village was nothing more than a housing estate – although they have a book exchange housed in an old phone box.

But the Ocean Village was part of a maze-like housing estate – I swear I felt like Theseus in the labyrinth. Thankfully, there was no minotaur pursuing me. Yet even when I escaped the housing estate, I then became lost in the big industrial estate.

Eventually, I found my way back to the riverfront

but as it was industrialised I couldn’t walk along it, so I slowly navigated my way back inland seeing another closed church and walking through Hogland’s park.

By 3.45, I had returned to the city centre where I headed into the local Oxfam. This and Brantano’s seemed to be the only charity shops in the whole city. Generally, I find Oxfam to be a ripoff, but I still bought 3 DVDs there: Juno, the Legend of Josey Wales and Before Midnight, for under £3.

Now it was 4pm and I was running out of things to do – yes that was because I had been too cheap to pay for any of the attractions, but I was starting to get bored. I briefly looked around the remnants of the Holyrood church – the only church I would enter, before I headed into the West Quay shopping centre.

And there I found somebody who could repair my broken watchstrap – the watch repair chain Timpson’s. It cost me £16.95, but paying was a nightmare. I didn’t have enough cash nor enough money on my card and I could get no internet connection to transfer money over, so I had to leave my watch at Timpson’s, go into the street and transfer money there. The man at Timpson’s said the internet there was crap and he wasn’t wrong. But the main thing was I got my watch strap replaced. This has been broken for ages and has been annoying me.

It was nearing five at this time, so I headed into another shopping centre – Marland’s – which had a cool selection of shops – a sweet shop for all the pre-diabetics, an anime shop for the weibaboos, a shop full of Buddha statues, crystals and incense for the people who make spirituality their whole personality, a merchandise shop for the fans who take their obsessions with fictional pieces of media too far. And there was a games cafe where you could play Magic the Gathering while eating traditional Polish pierogi. I have never played Magic, but the pierogi sure sounded nice.

Alas, as they didn’t have a shop for judgemental arseholes like me and it was almost time to go home, I headed to the station. The idea was to do a Too Good to Go bag at AMT coffee in Southampton Central Station, but the cafe was shut! I was not happy about that.

Thankfully, I managed to get the order cancelled and refunded. Now it was 5.30 and my train home was at 6. Would I have enough time to get another TGTG bag from a different vendor? Would I be able to eat the TGTG bag for dinner tonight? Would my phone connect to my data? And the answer to the most nail-biting questions, since the S6 finale of the Walking Dead, was yes. I bought a TGTG bag from another station cafe: Gourmet. I received two cornish pasties, a chicken, bacon and leek wrap, a pain au chocolat and a pain aux raisins for £4 instead of £14. I would be eating dinner like a king tonight.

At 6, it was time to catch my train home. One of the neighbouring passages was a little dog person who kept coming over to for pets, but the other kept pulling him away before I could pet him. But then the owner went to the bathroom, I enacted my master plan and stroked the dog person while I had the chance. MWUAHAHAHA

Anyway, I arrived back at Waterloo at 7.20, which concluded my day in Southampton. I’m not going to lie, I could have used more things to do – or at least more free things to do, as I was too cheap to pay for the attractions. To be honest, I think there is a correlation between how much I enjoy a city and how much I actually do there – in this case it was very little.

But also Southampton had a weird layout. What was with the labyrinthesque housing estates? And why was so difficult for me to reach the river front? I’m surprised the Titanic was able to sail out of there without getting lost. But I did get £6.45 fish and chips and I petted a little dog person. Any day where I do that is a good day. And that was my day at Southampton – a day of book exchanges, inaccessible seafronts and the worse internet connectivity known to man. Stoke. You’re next!