Exploring the Hamble

Published 21:59 on 2 Jun 2025

Last Wednesday our rowers took a trip over to the Hamble River. The Hamble River is a river of two parts. The lower reaches of the Hamble are very busy with boats, boatyards, and lots of activity. In contrast the upper reaches of the Hamble are very quiet and peaceful. This is one of our favourite rows, the river changes with the seasons, and no matter how many times you go there is always something different to see. We launched at Warsash and were joined by crews from Emsworth SC, Emsworth Slipper and Tudor SC. We had an interesting row up the lower reaches of the Hamble playing our favourite game of boat and house spotting. Disappointed that we had not found anything we could afford we stopped at the Jolly Sailor for a coffee. The Jolly Sailor is the home of The Hamble River Rowing Club and we met up with a number of their rowers, who joined us with two more boats.

The next part of our trip took us under the M27 and into the upper part of the river, The river here is bordered by trees and fields with lots of wildlife and boat envy is replaced by bird spotting. This stretch of the river is very quiet and apart from our small flotilla of boats there was no one else on the river. A few miles upstream there is a small tributary called Curbridge Creek and we nosed into the creek which is overgrown with trees and reeds. With the wind behind us we had a short encounter with an oak tree which insisted on getting into the boat with us. At the top of the creek there is a lovely pub called the Horse and Jockey, our destination for lunch (apologies if this is sounding like a pub crawl by row boat). One of the other crews had spotted the pub was offering two steaks and a bottle of wine for £40, whilst some indulged the rest of us enjoyed a slightly more modest lunch.

The beauty of the Hamble River is that due to the double Solent tides there is a very long stand at High Water. If you choose the right tide you can get a stand of three hours. Needless to say we had planned out trip so that the start of the stand coincided with the pub opening time allowing us time for a nice leisurely lunch. It is slightly disconcerting when you do this for the first time since the tide rises and falls several times during the stand giving the impression that the tide is dropping only to come back in again.

Having enjoyed a lovely lunch and an opportunity to catch up with friends we rowed back down stream making sure to miss the oak tree this time. We said goodbye to our friends from the Hamble at the Jolly Sailor, slightly smug in the fact that we were all able to navigate so far up river whilst most of the boats could go no further than the bridge.

Back at Warsash we loaded the boat back on the trailer and made our way home having had a great day out.