During the heyday of the great trans-Atlantic liners such the RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, Southampton was billed as the "Gateway to the World" with 46% of the UK's passenger traffic coming through Southampton, together with a fair proportion of freight traffic.

Southampton still remains a great seaport and now has the biggest gross tonnage of cruise liners, together with regular trans-Atalantic traffic with the Queen Elizabeth II (her last year) and the Queen Mary II. These ships tie up in the Mayflower Cruise Terminal and the grandly-named Ocean Terminal, both downstream of the less exotic traffic from the Container Terminal, one berth of which and part of another shown here.

Around 95% of these containers leave the port by road, more's the pity. I should think most of the containers being off-loaded from the "Berlin Express" are full of plastic Christmas trees, coloured balls, lights and other disposale junk to fill up landfills before long.

This was taken late last Saturday evening as the light was going but before darkness descended. Had ABP, the port's owners, had their way, the location where I was stood, the wonderfully-named Goatee Beach, would have been under yet more concrete and containers. Luckily, the plans were thrown out. Obviously, the bung given to the planners had not been big enough!    

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