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Published: September 24th 2008
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21st - 24th September
We left our hotel in Muscat at 9pm to start the long journey to Isle of Man. We flew Muscat - Abu Daubi - London - Edinburgh - Isle of Man, arriving at around 4pm (8pm in Omani time a 23 hour journey). We picked up our rental car from the airport, we circled the around a few times before finding our bearings to Douglas and our B&B, not sure if we were just tired but Ron’s normal radar for finding directions was not working.
At our B&B we were shown to our room, one of only two at the top of the building, we are actually in the attic. The steep staircase up to our room has six u-turns and 62 stairs as well as around 5 fire doors you have to open and shut, feels like climbing the Mt Sinai Steps of Redemption again. After the long flights and the stairs to our room we felt fairly shattered. We recovered quickly and headed to a local pub on the waterfront for dinner and a pint, Ron ordered fish an chips and the piece of fish was so large it must have measured a
foot long. We need to have another pint at another pub on the way home to fortify ourselves for the climb to our room.
After a tasty breakfast at our B&B we headed off to the Great Laxey Wheel and Mines Trail. Ron was surprised how much the site had been improved since he last visited 30 years ago, you can actually now take a short walk in to the mine. We walked the whole trail which took about an hour and then drove to the harbour in Laxey and rewarded ourselves with a strawberry cream tea, the scones and fresh strawberries were good but the cream was magic, Ron commented he hadn’t tasted cream like that for years.
We continued on to Ramsey and then to the Point of Ayre, the northern most point of the island. We walked along the pebble beach at the Point of Ayre, the pebbles were large and multicoloured, very unusual. We drove back via the small back lanes through Tholt-e-Will Glen and as close as we could to the top of Snaefell, the highest peak, where they say you can see seven kingdoms. We followed the narrow lanes back down to
Cronk-y-Voddy, we were glad we didn’t see many other cars as we weren’t sure how we would pass. We both agreed the Isle of Man has some funny place names but that every small village was very beautiful, everything appears so green and lush after our time in Egypt and Oman.
We joined the Manx TT circuit back to Douglas, it was interesting to see the stone walls on the bends were still padded from the last time the race was last on. We were passed quickly by some nice cars, a Porsche and Maserati whose drivers seemed to be racing around the TT track, I thought of Mark and his race on Calder, I am sure he would like driving one of the cars we saw.
We had dinner in a modern pub called Jaks, located on the promenade, where we not only had good food but free internet connection. We found ourselves updating our travel blog amongst the loud cheering football supporters who were watching the match between Manchester United and Middlesborough which was showing on the big screen TV’s, it was a little bit of a culture change after Egypt and Oman.
Wednesday, our
last full day, on the way to Peel to see the magnificent ruins of Peel Castle, we stopped at the Isle of Man open air parliament, at Tynwald. Dating back to Viking origins over 1,000 years ago, Tynwald is the oldest legislature in the world in continuous existence. When we arrived at Peel we walked to the top of a local hill for lovely views of the Castle ruins and the harbour. Whilst in Peel we saw the “House of Manannan” which told the story of the Isle of Man. The display told of over 2000 years of the islands history, including the Celtic, Viking and Maritime past.
We drove on to Port Erin where we had lunch at the train station cafe and watched the steam train arrive from Douglas. We continued on to Cregneash the southern tip of the Island where we saw a seal swimming between the shore and the small island the “Calf of Man”. We drove through Port St Mary on our way to Castletown, where we visited Castle Rushen and impressive limestone fortress which was the seat of the former Kings and Lords of Mann.
Our last stop for the day was
Rushen Abbey, located in Ballasalla, this is one of the island's important religious sites. On the way back to our B&B we crossed the fairy bridge and remembered to say hello to the fairies.
Being our last night we decided to head out and try another pub where we sampled "manx queenies" which we found were actually small scallops and finished with bread and butter pudding, all washed down with a pint.
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