Brownsea Island is an island in Poole Harbour (on the south coast of England) that is owner by the National Trust and is basically a large nature reserve. Each year BOAT put on a different Shakespeare play for about a fortnight and this year, for the first time in their 40 or so year history, they decided to stage Hamlet. Obviously as Brownsea Island is an island you have to catch a boat out there, but BOAT arrange it all and it's well organised. They perform the play on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings with the privso that if the weather is bad, it will be moved to the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

As my house was one of the 100,000 affected by a 3 day power outage, I opted to go down earlier than I intended and to go on a boat trip first around Poole Harbour. These boat trips set off from Bournemouth which is a large seaside town just around the coast from Poole.

Unfortunately when I got to Bournemouth all the boat trips were cancelled as the sea was so rough so instead I just had a wander along the beach.

I think all the people in the sea were in wetsuits - there were lots of surfers there:

However when I drove round to Poole Harbour, it was lovely and calm! This is looking at Brownsea Island from the area that they call Sandbanks which is quite an exclusive area. Lots of properties here are in the million pound bracket.

There were lots of people on surf boards being towed by kites in the air as it was breezy. The funniest thing I saw was someone falling off his board and then standing up in the water as the depth in that part of Poole Harbour was only about three feet!

In Poole Harbour there is a statue of Lord Baden Powell (who set up the Scouts and Girl Guides) as the Scouts are involved with Brownsea Island too:

This house is at the landing on Brownsea Island:

As I was early for the play, I had a wander around the island and found some lovely woods and small beaches. The thing that struck me was how quite it was there:

There's loads of wildlife on the island:

They keep hens too and they were interested in all the picnics that people were having before the play!

The "stage":

It was a good production of Hamlet although I was surprised that the ghost was invisible as I haven't seen that before in a production. Lots of the speeches were cut quite harshly which I found disappointing. Including the 20 minue interval, the play only lasted about 2.5 hours. However that was long enough for me to be bitten high on my thigh (goodness knows how as I was wearing trousers!) that came up larger than a saucer over the next few days!

There were several boats waiting for us when the play finished so I got back to my car by 11pm and got home by 2am.

In 2012 BOAT are putting on Love's Labour's Lost (which I'm seeing at The Globe in September) so I'll ensure I come back for that play.