Josephine Cross

I travelled a lot in my life but have come back to Southampton on many occasions. My husband and I bought a sailing boat which had been stripped of its valuable metal work. We moved it to Hamble and built it back up.

We sailed to Plymouth, Poole and Cherbourg but unfortunately lost the boat in a gale on the Atlantic, but luckily it was picked up by a German Tanker.

We arrived back in the UK via Portugal but the Customs officials in Woolwich wouldn’t let us land as we didn’t have the necessary documentation! After a weekend on the tanker it was decided that we could land but would have to report to a police station twice a day as a security measure!

Throughout the years we travelled a lot and returned to the UK in September of 1979, originally settling in Reading but then moving to a Bungalow in Mercury Gardens in Southampton as our daughter was in Basingstoke. We stayed until 1990 when my husband and I moved to Spain.

Due to the sudden death of my husband in 1997 and my own ill health I had to return to the UK. I decided to come back to Southampton as I had a trusted doctor and many friends.

One of my fondest memories is of the Hamble River in 1955 and living in the Bungalow in the 1980’s.