Blogs from Isle of Man, Europe - page 2

Yesterday (which seems like about ten years ago) mostly involved not getting covered in food, spending all our money on a couple of sarnies, not getting married and getting very judgy. After a swim and pushing up, we drove to Gretna green. In part so Seth could tick Scotland off his list of countries but also to see what it was all about (not to get married!) In short... It was less tacky than I expected, the food was soooooo expensive I could have done with a second mortgage and some of the people were.... interesting. One old guy ruffled Seth's hair (Seth's was quite taken aback but proclaimed it was his first time having his hair ruffled by an old man ?.) We were also sat by the bar and this bloke ordered 4 double ... read more

The people who live on the Isle of Man are English but not British, they are Manx. They have their own government and are a crown dependency. The Queen of England is not their Queen, she is the Lord of Man. Settled by the Vikings, it has its own government, Tynwald, which has run continuously since 979. A.D. It has an associate status in the EU, its own currency and its own language (manx Gaelic). The population of sheep outnumbers that of people by 2 to 1. The islands highest point is Snaefell which means snow mountain in Viking language.We rode to the top on a series of two electric trains. The train rides were interesting but very loud. Scenery was beautiful going up the mountain. We passed a huge waterwheel called the Isabela that pumps ... read more

Got up early to have a little walk around the Albert Dock area, but in my half-asleep state I misjudged the amount of time I had before the ferry so I actually could have spent longer there. Better than the other way around, I guess. The fast catamaran left around 11:15 and we sped over the waves to the Isle of Man. Had a little breakfast at the beginning of the journey because I knew that the Irish Sea would get choppy later, and so it was - wasn't even easy to stand up and walk around. So I snoozed in my seat instead. My chums met me off the boat and we sped off again in their car, along the winding country lanes to St John's, where my friend works. It's the site of the ... read more

Another great breakfast, another lovely walk into Peel (on the correct paths); this time took the bus to Ramsey, mostly along the coast, seeing another part of the Isle on the way north. Map (https://www.gov.im/media/1347429/isle-of-man-bus-map.pdf) Peel is on the West side of the Isle, on the coast. Douglas is pretty much a 9-mile drive East of Peel, on the other coast. Ramsey is North of Douglas, along the east coast. Yesterday, we took a steam train south from Douglas, along the coast, to the south. Today, we took the bus north east from Peel to Ramsey, not quite the northern tip, then an electric train south along the East coast, stopping at Laxey to take another electric train westish up to the highest point on the Isle, Snaefell, then back down to Laxey and the rest ... read more

As I said at the end of the last entry, the taxi was prompt and it wasn't 15 minutes to the airport. We had watched the planes taking off the evening before, from an outside seat near the Footgolf field; such a gorgeous evening! We were at the airport in plenty of time for Mike to get a full Irish breakfast. After doing battle with the self-serve baggage checking and boarding pass kiosk, only to learn that it was not working properly, a kindly Aer Lingus employee helped us. Had to move some yarn from one bag to another to get the weight correct and I'd forgotten that we could have 'checked' the luggage in earlier (online) and saved some of the fee. Of course, we were on a small flight so had to walk forever ... read more