I’ve no idea where the day on Wight went. Mainly hanging around at bus stops, feeling sick on buses and then finding pot plants to dispose of below-par beer. Admit it, you’re jealous.
Another half hour on Ventis to Wootton, joined by shoppers and schoolchildren dreaming of their trip to the mythical land of Portsmouth. Why won’t Primark open a store on Wight ?
Wootton appears little more than a junction, with a pub that looks like a care home on the corner.
Well, this was Old School.
A few lads playing pool, no tourists. Two Fullers beers, a sprawl of drinking areas.
It reminded me of my own local, the Sun, and provided the best beer of the day, an HSB comfortably above NBSS 3.5. It can be done.
In a moment of BRAPA madness, I gave the landlord 90p instead of £1.80, continuing to confuse the 10p for the quid. I do that quite a bit these days, a small act of rebellion against the £3 pint barrier being breached.
Dave and Mags (I guess) run a Proper Pub that might just be my favourite on the Isle. I was so excited I rushed to catch the bus and left my glasses on the table.
Back in Ryde I headed for the Railway and its 200 million year old gingko biloba tree.
My penultimate Wight tick promised Framptwood Mac and a Proper Pub experience with “rare beer styles” (ugh !)
It was closed.
I could reach the doors, though neither of them indicated opening times. The lights were on, so I knocked, but nothing stirred. I phoned, no-one answered.
But Facebook, the only social media, indicated there’d be live music that night.
Sod it. I’ve got to come back to do Joe’s, and then the Railway had better be brilliant.
Rather than camp on the Railway patio I caught the early hovercraft, admiring the view to Pompey.
Anyway, enjoy this full–length feature film of the hovercraft arriving in Ryde.
retiredmartin 
Was going to catch ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth IOW for a day trip to explore and do the GBG pub in the town. I wasn’t going to pay £34 return for two of us as foot passengers. Right rip off.
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As if the Isle of Wight is such a classy place that it is selective in who it will have as day trippers !
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It says something about good ol’ Blighty, that there ain’t no bridge, if you ask me.
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Yes, anywhere else there would be.
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A bridge isn’t practical because of the shipping (especially naval) but there have been proposals for a tunnel since about 1870. I think I have an old OS map somewhere from the 1900s which shows a ‘proposed tunnel’ that would have come off the railway to Lymington and emerged somewhere in the western end of the Island.
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It’s typical of this country that we can’t address problems creatively and invent boats to fly over the bridge.
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But Briton Christopher Cockerell invented the hovercraft to whisk you across to Ryde.
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Well, the boats could just go the other way round the island…or under a bridge if it were high enough (like the Severn crossing) and as other countries manage quite merrily.
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How about a tunnel ?
The trains are ex London Underground so they’d be well suited to one.
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I’d rather drive over a bridge than through a tunnel, but each to his own.
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We first went to IOW about 35 years ago & had another holiday about 4 yrs ago -it hadn’t changed much -I have tried to like it but it is difficult -we quite liked The Spyglass at Ventnor but mainly because it is slap bang next to the sea.I don’t think a return visit will be made
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I plan to revisit the Spyglass when I make my 3rd trip soon.
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Gosh -you are..keen on getting your ticks !
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Damn, I missed that line for RM’s Darlington posts.
“Get your ticks,
On the A Sixty-Six”
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That’s more BRAPA than me, sell it to him
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