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Published: July 31st 2015
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Breakfast in a BnB is hilarious just to hear all the old people chatter... even more so considering everyone is British. I think my fav this morning was a wife trying to explain to her husband what a cassowary is - "It's a bit like an ostrich gone wrong." Well... she's not wrong. And God the jokes. Hilarious that is until they started talking about immigration, ahem. Boy do the claws come out and a lot of hatred starts getting spewed...
Anyway, on to happy things. Another charming thing about Isle of Man is their heritage in regards to transportation. They still have an old steam train, an electric mountain tram and an electric railway running regular service along with horse drawn trams. Come on now. I took the steam train today - very busy since I took the first of the day, but it was awesome! I sat with, shocker, a bunch of old Brits. No immigration talk so we were good 😉 Anyway, they are cute little cabins on the train - comfortably sitting 8, then a divider and another 8 - with great big windows we could pull down with leather straps. There's just something about hearing
the true chug-a-lug of a steam train and seeing great big puffs of steam float past your window.
I didn't really do anything in Port Erin other than walk around the town centre. I caught the bus shortly after to head to Cregneash - a village folk museum. It was ok. They're filming something here (there are signs posted everywhere... like I saw some near Peel yesterday, and again today on the way out), so that was a bit distracting to have so much traffic around. I didn't stay all that long and continued on to Calf Sound instead for a nice view of the Calf of Man and the surrounding coastline. It didn't disappoint!
I started walking back towards Port Erin - to walk the entire way I'm sure wouldn't have been that long, but I only did about 30 min and came back. It was quite a rocky walk! It starts with a big open field (I totally lost the trail coming back, whoops!) and then climbs up onto rock face... now I know yesterday I was going on about how much I love hiking where there's no fencing and where it hasn't been 'tourist-proofed' ...
but I don't particularly love areas where you have to crouch to really get your centre of gravity solid so that the wind doesn't blow you over the cliff. Ahem. Needless to say I made it to the 'top' part where I was at least shielded from the majority of the wind by this giant rock formation... it was quite interesting to look at.
After that I headed back to the 'start' point so that I'd have time to walk the other way as well. On my way back I saw a seal out in the distance. They're pretty common in this area, but this guy was a little too far out for a good photo. I watched him for a bit though - just bobbing along in the waters. It was starting to get very windy again, so the waves were picking up. I started walking the other way (I guess towards Port St. Mary?) and there was an area where you could pretty much climb all the way down to sea level on these great, big, flat boulders. So I did, and lo and behold buddy boy showed up again. (Yes, it was probably a different seal,
but whatever.) He was much closer this time so I was able to take some decent shots as he bobbed along. It's fun watching them. All I could think of was Pingu and his seal friend.
Other than that I contented myself to watch and listen to the waves once more. It was getting overcast; I figured it was going to rain soon so I got on the bus and made my way back to Douglas where sure enough... rain. That's ok though - it was just a sprinkle. I did use it as an excuse to go shopping though... M&S, what would my work wardrobe look like without you?
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