The breakfast room was still very quiet and lacking atmosphere. The self-service offering was luke warm rather than hot.

After breakfast we chilled out in our room looking out over the Cathedral green before it was time to attend the 11.15 Easter Day service in the Cathedral. The service was excellent and we received communion from the Bishop and Archdeacon. When it came for the greeting part of the service, the Bishop walked up the aisle shaking people’s hands. As he shook mine, he said to me, ‘I had better not go to much further I might not get back in time’. He then walked his way back shaking hands on the opposite aisle.

Before leaving the Cathedral, we went to see the Easter Garden that the flower ladies had been creating during our visit the previous day. We once again met the Bishop and also the newly installed Dean as we headed out of the Cathedral into the sunshine.

We hopped in our car which was parked in the hotel car park, right next to the Cathedral. Our destination was Bucklers Hard which is a short walk down the river from Beaulieu. When we arrived, we had lunch in the Captain’s Table tea shop before visiting the museum.

The Museum documents the history of the 18^th century shipbuilding in the village of Bucklers Hard. Bucklers Hard is famous as a naval ship building centre. Warships for Nelson’s Navy were built there. The Museum also displays village life in the 1800s and how village life changed in the 19^th and 20^th century from lively shipbuilding activities to sleepy rural hamlet.

We then walked down to the harbour visiting the open house and church along the way. We arrived at the harbour shortly before a boat tour of the river was due to start. There were only six of us on the trip so we were able to see the views on both sides of the river, the captain highlighting points of interest along the way.

We had just enough time to briefly visit the exhibition of archaeology which displays items that were found during an excavation of the boatyard. We watched a video but the exhibition closed before we could fully explore the exhibits.

We freshened up and relaxed in our room, which had been serviced (no biscuits!) before dining in Chesil Rectory. The food was excellent and every bit as good as I remembered it when we last visited over 10 years ago. We both had duck as our main course and shared a rhubarb frangipane dessert.

It being Sunday the Crown and Anchor was closed so we returned to the hotel for a nightcap. It was quiet in the bar although there was a noisy group in the restaurant area.

After a while I heard the barman say ‘I think I can close the bar in 15 or 16 minutes. After about 10 minutes he told us he was closing the bar and that we were welcome to take our drinks to our room. So we asked him for another glass of wine to take to the room and were advised that the bar was already shut. Mr C said ‘I didn’t hear you call last orders’ and I asked if we could order a glass via room service. The response was ‘no we don’t do that any more the bar is a separate company from the hotel. Sorry Guys.’ He clearly wasn’t sorry at all and couldn’t have cared less!

We promptly left, both of us feeling underwhelmed by the experience.

The portable communion set seen [above]  was used by Reverend Lumley Green-Wilkinson to administer communion to the members of the 7th and 8th battalion, The King’s Royal Rifle Corps and the 7th and 8th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, when he was Chaplain to the 41st Infantry Brigade in the 14th (Light) Division whilst serving in Ypres salient during 1915. This period included the German offensive at Hooge on 30/31 July when the brigade suffered over 1,000 casualties.*

*Information next to the communion set

Above the Thornton brass is a sculpture designed by Stephen Cox.  It represents a broken Communion wafer and the meniscus of a cup of Communion wine.

high up on the back of the reredos, is a curious sculpture of two discs.  The top one, in Egyptian alabaster, represents a broken Communion wafer while the second, in Roman imperial porphyry, represents the meniscus (the flat surface) of a cup of Communion wine.  Both types of stone have been quarried for thousands of years in Egypt, first by the Pharaohs and then by the Romans, and so both are directly linked to the actual time and place of Christ’s earthly life.*

*From the Cathedral of St Nicholas guidebook.