Summer of Savings at the Spinnaker Tower

If you have lived in Portsmouth long enough, you have likely spent a good portion of your life looking up at the Spinnaker Tower rather than from it. The 170-metre observation tower at Gunwharf Quays, also known as the Millennium Tower, is one of the most recognisable shapes on the south coast, and for the next couple of weeks it is actually affordable to go to the top. The Summer of Savings promotion runs until 1 September, so there is a window of about a fortnight left to catch it before the school holidays wrap up.

The appeal is straightforward: adult tickets are £12 and children are £10, which the tower describes as its lowest prices of the summer. The saving is built into the standard price, so there are no vouchers to track down or promo codes to enter. It is worth booking online in advance, though, because that knocks a further £5 off the standard all-day admission, and the tower recommends booking ahead regardless. Once you are up, the views are the main event: 350 degrees of panorama that stretch up to 23 miles across Portsmouth, the Solent, the South Downs and over to the Isle of Wight. A high-speed lift gets you to the viewing decks in about 30 seconds, and there are three platforms at 100, 105 and 110 metres, with the top Sky Deck covered by a wire mesh roof and the first platform featuring a glass floor 100 metres above sea level. The ticket also covers the interactive touchscreens, the Tower Talks, the open-air Sky Garden and the Sky Walk.

If you want to make an afternoon of it, there is more than just the view. The Clouds Café does afternoon tea and brunch, and from 7pm it turns into the Sky Bar for cocktails and sunsets, which runs its Sky Bar Sunset Sundays with live music on a weekly basis. Spinnaker Kitchen & Bar has a discounted children's menu if you are bringing the family, and there is a virtual reality experience on the viewing decks. For anyone with a head for heights, the tower runs abseiling on Saturdays and Sundays, letting you drop 100 metres down the side, and a free-fall bungee jump has been part of the offering since 2018. The Family Fun Trail, with its activity passport and collectible stickers, is the obvious choice for younger visitors.

A bit of history rounds out the place. The tower opened on 18 October 2005 after a six-year delay, with construction having started back in 2001, and it cost £35.6 million to build, part funded by the National Lottery. The design was chosen by public vote in 1998, and the tower has carried a few names and sponsors over the years, most recently Macmillan Cancer Support since June 2023. The Solent it looks over is a stretch of water about 20 miles long between the mainland and the Isle of Wight, and it has been a working navigation route and a sailing hub for centuries. The tower is open from 10:30am to 5:30pm, so there is plenty of time to catch a clear day before the promotion ends at the start of September.