Strategically located just a few nautical miles inside the western entrance of the Solent on the Hampshire coast, Lymington is a charming port town that is home to ~15,000 residents. A small cobbled old town stretches down to the municipal docks on the side of the eponymous river, and an array of marine businesses stretches in either direction along the river’s western bank. Frequent ferries to and from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight slide through the harbor, dwarfing vast array of pleasure boats moored along the side of the main channel.
Lymington is known for its Georgian architecture. For many hundreds of years until the 1800s, the town was an important manufacturer of salt. The profits from selling the salt allowed town residents to thrive, and one enduring result is a plenitude of stately red brick homes built along winding, oak-shaded streets.
The salt-making happened in a network of shallow salt ponds excavated along the edge of the Solent, and today the berms and levees between the ponds makes for idyllic walking conditions. A network of trails winds through the salt ponds from Lymington nearly all the way to Hurst Castle at the western mouth of the Solent, and a vast array of seabirds call the ponds home.
Oso stayed at the town dock on the outskirts of Lymington for the entire month of December, sometimes resting peacefully but oftentimes bucking and straining against her lines as a series of strong winter storms marched in from the west.
