I have just returned from my short break on the Isle of Man. Mum and I went on one of these coach trips that are usually the province of the more elderly and infirm of the population – I think I was probably the youngest by a few years!
The coach left Cheltenham at 7.15am on Thursday morning (its first pick-up was in Swindon at 5.00am!) making its final pick-up in Worcester before heading up the motorway to Heysham, just south of Liverpool. The day was damp with a chill wind and overcast skies that did not bode well for the crossing. The ferry, Ben My Chree, left Heysham at 2.15 and set sail for Douglas. Unfortunately, I'd failed to realise that it is nearly 70 miles to the Isle of Man and the ferry averages about 15 knots (less than 20mph) so it took about three and a half hours.
Mum has the finest sea legs of anyone I know – a few years ago she went on a cruise from Dover to Tangier They never actually got to Tangier as they met a Force 10 gale (or should that be hurricane) in the Bay of Biscay and had to put into Bilbao to off load all the injured passengers! Mum and her friend, Mary, thoroughly enjoyed themselves despite Mum only narrowly escaping injury when a picture fell off the wall, and failing to save all the crockery as it slid off the table where they were dining. Strangely, there weren't many people dining at the time but there were many breakages of crockery! I do not appear to have inherited my sea legs from my Mum despite having a line of sailors on my Mum's side of the family that go back several generations plus my great grandfather on my Dad's side, so it wasn't long before the stuffy conditions below deck and the inescapable smell of chips and vinegar, were having a detrimental effect on my stomach. Just over an hour into the journey we went on deck where, even though it was going up and down quite a lot, at least I could see the horizon and that, and the stiff sea breeze, helped quell the nausea. I asked Mum if the conditions were actually quite rough, or whether I was just a rubbish sailor, and was slightly mollified when she said it was 'a bit choppy'! There only seemed to be a small area of deck for passengers at the stern of the ship so we had a good view of where we'd been but little idea of where we were heading, so it was a while before I realised that we were finally in site of land.
Once off the ferry it was only a five minute drive to our hotel located on the sea front. The hotel was an old Victorian hotel that had 'been brought up to date whilst retaining period features'. This meant that the place was like a rabbit warren as it had originally been several different houses all knocked into one with staircases going up and down every few yards, narrow corridors only about a metre wide and there were five fire doors between our room and the lift! It was not strictly suitable for a coach-load of elderly people as you had to climb six steps from the pavement before entering the hotel lobby, and the fire doors were a real obstacle to free movement. Also the lift was tiny and restricted to a maximum of three people at any one time. Luckily, our bags were delivered to our rooms by a horde of hotel staff who poured out of the hotel on our arrival to collect the luggage from the coach – was this to prevent our escape?
Our room was on the second floor on the side of the hotel and had definitely seen better days – there was wallpaper peeling under the window and one curtain had missing curtain hooks so that it did not close completely, but the beds were comfortable, the room was not too hot and, if we sat on our beds we had a small view of the sea out of the window. Some of our fellow passengers were not so lucky being in tiny rooms at the back of the hotel that were too hot and looked out onto a brick wall! We'd arrived at the hotel at about 6.00pm so it wasn't long before our dinner in the 'self-service carvery'. I think they'd failed to register that the clue is in the name 'carvery', hinting at some form of carved meat being on offer, as the choice for dinner was sausages swimming in a very artificially brown gravy; something that looked like a hotpot; and 'traditional cod in a white wine and cheese mornay sauce'. I opted for the fish and helped myself to peas (frozen or tinned, it was difficult to tell as they were immersed in water) and sweetcorn (ditto). Well, I'm glad that my stomach had not fully recovered as this meal was almost inedible as the fish had been so overcooked that it had curled up on itself and had no flavour at all, even with the sauce in which I could detect no hint of white wine and very little of cheese. Mum and I looked at each other aghast and made emergency plans to check out any nearby restaurants in which to eat on subsequent evenings! Despite the fact that this was a self-service carvery there seemed to be an inordinate number of waiters and waitresses about – we counted seven and the chef at one time, and they paced the room like caged tigers until someone finished a course when they would leap forward and grab the dirty plate almost before you had replaced your cutlery.
We retired early to bed and Mum was soon asleep, but I lay awake for a while listening to the music from the bar opposite and the attendant shouting and laughing of the local 'youth', interspersed with the sound of breaking glass as someone (I imagine it was the barman) threw empty bottles into the recycling bin. Just as I was about to drop off to sleep the people in the room above came back and flushed the loo, whereupon a water hammer that sounded like a foghorn started up and carried on for some minutes, causing me to start giggling hysterically into my pillow.
The next morning, after a restorative cuppa, things didn't seem quite so bad, although the weather did not look good for our morning trip to Peel on the western coast, the clouds hanging in grey tatters across the inland hills, and large puddles on the Promenade from the overnight rain. I consumed the obligatory 'Full English' and felt fortified against the trials of the day.
Our coach driver began every announcement he made over the speaker system with a cheery 'Bing bong!', which I thought would soon pall but, in fact became quite endearing – I'm just very glad that he hadn't chosen 'Hi-de-Hi!' as I would have had to kill him!
Peel was a lovely, old town with a castle on a small island at the end of the harbour, and shortly after we arrived, the clouds blew away, the sun came out and it got positively warm! Mum and I walked right to the end of the harbour wall, spotting some oyster catchers dipping about in the shallows and a couple of birds, that could have been cormorants, diving in the harbour, as well as the ubiquitous herring gulls that lined the harbour wall and took off as we approached. We decided not to go into the castle but went to look for the kipper smokery that was in the other direction. Unfortunately, they were not doing tours that day but we bought a couple of vacuum-packed kippers to take home with us – you can't beat a good Manx kipper, and then it was 'everyone back on the bus' as we made our way back to Douglas for a free afternoon, which saw Mum and me, walking miles along the promenade, sampling the local ice cream and finally making it back to the huge Manx Museum only a short time before it closed, so that we only managed to see a tantalisingly small portion of the collection. We wished at that point that we had foregone the 'two course lunch' served at the hotel which turned out to be half a ham baguette and some chips! We headed down for dinner fully prepared to duck out of the hotel and find somewhere else to eat but, amazingly, the menu was much better and better cooked too and from then on, we couldn't really fault the food at all. I wonder if perhaps it had been a different chef on duty when we arrived? That night the 'entertainment' outside our window ramped up a notch with the music continuing until at least 11.30 (I fell asleep at that point), more shouting and giggling and the occasional shriek, all to the sporadic accompaniment of breaking glass! As Mum sleepily muttered,”Why can't he put it all in in one go?” - a good point.
The next day dawned dry but a bit overcast, and after breakfast we were off to the Laxey Wheel. This phenomenal piece of Victorian engineering and ingenuity is a large water wheel, 72' 6” in diameter and so well balanced that it barely makes a noise as it rotates at 2rpm. It was built to pump water (over 20,000 gallons a week) from the deep lead workings further up the valley, and utilised a moving arm, supported on rollers, that ran over a viaduct to the mine pumps. To one side of the wheel is a stone tower with an outside spiral staircase of slate steps, which climbs to the top of the wheel where there is a viewing platform. I was amazed, on turning round at the top, to see Mum not far behind me! There were 96 steps and halfway down my legs became quite rubbery and I was glad to reach the bottom. The next day my leg muscles really ached, but Mum didn't have a problem at all! From there we went from Laxey to the top of Snaefell (2036 feet) on the electric mountain railway, a journey that took about half an hour and, as we started off the clouds rolled away, the sun came out and when we got to the top the visibility was brilliant. This kept happening at every venue – the poor people on the other coach tour that stayed at our hotel had done this trip the day before and hadn't even bothered to go on the mountain railway as it was raining and the visibility was zero.
After our trip to the top of the mountain we went to Ramsay for a late lunch. Mum had been recommended to go to a restaurant in Ramsay on the quay, called Gophers, by her friend Kathleen from Scotland! Apparently, the owner was the son of a friend of hers so, being a bit peckish and finding ourselves on the quay, we went in for lunch and had the most delicious bowl of home-made ham shank and vegetable soup. I can highly recommend this café if you happen to find yourself in Ramsay! We strolled along the quayside, as both Mum and I love to look at boats, and watched a gaggle of Canada geese on a little sandbank in the middle of the harbour. We also spotted some small wading birds that we thought might be Knots (we're not quite sure now, having looked them up in a bird book) but it soon became apparent that one or two of them only had one leg as they were hopping about in the shallows and on the sand. I began to wonder what was going on as more and more of them appeared to only have one leg as they moved about, but then one of them gave the game away by putting down his other leg! I have often seen birds standing on one leg but I've never seen them prefer to move about using only one leg. Weird!
We came back to Douglas via the mountain road which forms the fastest part of the TT racetrack and is quite challenging on four wheels let alone two! The road was closed when we first got to it and we had to pull over into a lay-by, at directions from the police, until the road was re-opened about fifteen minutes later – presumably some wannabe racer had taken the bends a little too fast for his capabilities and ended up in a heap, hopefully, not fatally.
Saturday night in Douglas is 'live entertainment' night to the (now obligatory) accompaniment of breaking glass maracas but, I didn't find it too intrusive as all of the songs were from my era and I found it quite soothing to listen to 'Build me up, Buttercup' and the like. In fact, I did consider getting dressed and going down to join in!
Sunday was our last day on the island, as we were due to leave on the 8.45am ferry on Monday morning. This time we went to the south of the island to Castletown, which used to be the capital before everything was moved to Douglas. We got there before 10.00am and pretty much everything was closed and there were very few people about. Mum and I migrated to the harbour, as usual, passing the castle on the way. We then crossed an intriguing iron footbridge across the harbour entrance and found ourselves outside the Nautical Museum, which appeared to be closed and with no indication when, or even if, it would open. We walked on a short distance and on our return heard the door being unlocked. Well, what a find! It was a tiny museum housed in an old boathouse that had belonged to the 'big house' next door and we had it, and the curator, all to ourselves. The 'big house' and the boathouse had belonged to the Quayle family, an important and influential family on the island in the late 1700s. George Quayle, a bachelor as the male curator gleefully told us, was on the governing body of the island but he also played a big part in 'running' i.e. smuggling in his specially built schooner, The Peggy. When he got too old to sail her any more, he pulled her up into the boathouse and walled her in. Here she lay, forgotten until in 1935 the boathouse was bequeathed to the island museum, the war intervened, but in 1951 workmen broke down a wall to reveal the almost perfectly preserved boat lying on her side in the cellar of the boathouse. She is one of only a few boats from the 18th century to survive intact. George was a strangely secretive man and when the workmen first entered the boathouse there was neither a staircase to the upper rooms nor one to the cellar – he had made a 'secret' staircase that slid out from some panelling in the wall. He also had a fireplace in the sitting room that was not a fireplace at all – it revolved in the wall to reveal a safe, and there was a hidden drinks cabinet in the panelling of one wall that could be opened only by operating a catch on the opposite wall, which pulled a cord that ran in the ceiling! When they jemmied it open originally (before they discovered the catch) there were several bottles of a very good French brandy inside. We spent so much time in this museum that we didn't have time to get a cup of tea before we were off and away to Port Erin for lunch.
We walked along the seafront to the lifeboat station and then walked back and found a beach side café next to an old wooden lighthouse, where we had lunch, before getting back into the coach for a short trip to the southernmost tip of the island where we were treated to the spectacle of seals basking on the rocks in the sunshine. From there we drove back to Cregneash which is a preserved village where they farm using horse-drawn implements and where some of the cottages are open to the public and still have the old peat fires, open hearth and sleeping platform that were typical of a Manx crofter's house. It was very interesting but I was unable to take any pictures as I'd failed to recharge my camera battery the night before!
Our final excursion was to return from the south of the island to Douglas on the narrow gauge steam railway, a trip that took about an hour and went through some lovely countryside, again bathed in late afternoon sunshine. As someone in our carriage remarked, it looked like early September (and felt like it) rather than late October, so we had been really lucky with the weather. Our final dinner was, at last, a proper carvery with roast pork and apple sauce. I think they'd made a special effort as we were the last people booked into the hotel before it closed for the winter.
Mum and I thought that we'd be safe from 'entertainment' on our last night, it being a Sunday, but we were wrong! Sunday night is Karaoke night and all I can say is that there is not much in the way of X Factor talent on the island! It was very loud and raucous and had all the usual suspects 'Proud Mary', 'Don't Let the Sun go Down on Me', and, the one that nearly finished me off, an incredibly out of tune rendition of 'I did it My Way'! Things finally quietened down at 1.15am and as we had to be up before 6.00 to catch the ferry home, I was not feeling very charitable at that point and slept badly, finally giving up at 5.20 when Mum and I had a cup of tea!
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