Portsmouth is a seaside city, which is a polite way of saying it gets its share of weather off the Solent. The good news is that a wet day here is no write-off. Between the great covered ships, a tower you can hide inside and a long bench of indoor play, you can fill a whole rainy day without once getting your coat soaked. Here is where to head when the forecast turns.
The great ships, under a roof
The Historic Dockyard is the obvious first move, and much of it is indoors. The Mary Rose museum is entirely enclosed, a hushed, climate-controlled hall built around Henry VIII’s raised warship, and you could lose two hours in it alone. HMS Victory keeps you under cover for most of the tour below decks, and the single ticket covers both plus the other galleries, so the rain works in your favour by pushing you from one to the next.
A view from inside
When the cloud lifts a little, the Spinnaker Tower is a rare thing, a landmark view you take in from behind glass. The observation decks are warm and dry, the glass floor is a thrill whatever the weather, and watching a squall sweep across the harbour from a hundred metres up is better than being caught in it. It is the sort of place one visitor described as “the only time I have enjoyed the rain,” and on the right day you will see why.
Under the sea, and among the butterflies
The Blue Reef Aquarium on the seafront is tailor-made for a shower, an hour-long wander past rays and sharks that ends in the underwater tunnel. A short walk up the road, the free Natural History Museum at Cumberland House has a warm walk-through butterfly house from May to September, which is about the most pleasant place in the city to wait out a downpour, and it costs nothing to get in.
Energy to burn
Children with a day’s worth of energy and nowhere to run it off are the real rainy-day problem, and Portsmouth has the answer. The soft play and trampoline parks are built for exactly this, the bowling lanes at Gunwharf keep a group busy for an hour, and the Pyramids and the city pools turn bad weather into the whole point, with flumes and a wave machine indoors on the seafront.
For a thinking afternoon
If you would rather use your head than your legs, the escape rooms are a natural fit for a wet afternoon with friends, and the D-Day Story museum is a gripping hour entirely under cover. When all else fails, a film is never a bad shout, and the city’s cinemas run from the big multiscreen at Gunwharf to a cosy independent.
Shops, coffee and a plan B
For the kind of soft rain that comes and goes, Gunwharf Quays and the Cascades centre let you browse under cover and duck out between showers, and a long coffee with a harbour view is a respectable way to spend an hour you had not planned to be indoors. The trick, as ever in Portsmouth, is to keep a dry option in your back pocket. Do that, and the weather stops being the thing that decides your day.
