Pensioners' outing

For our recent expedition to the other island, that is to say the Isle of Wight, we thought we would try not taking the car, try seeing how we might get on in a world when the car was no longer an option.

We chose a hotel next to a railway station, Ryde Esplanade, and the next task was to work out how to get there. The National Rail Journey Planner was quite clear. Train from Epsom to Guildford. Pick up the Portsmouth train and get off at Portsmouth & Southsea. Bus to the Hoverport. Hovercraft to Ryde Esplanade. Around two and a half hours all in, about the same as it might otherwise have taken with the car, less the bother of driving it.

So on the appointed day we arrive at Epsom Station and buy our tickets, at a useful discount, as we are holders of Senior Railcards.

Get off at Portsmouth & Southsea and eventually find our way to the right bus stop. To be told by the bus driver that he would certainly take us to the Hoverport without further charge, but that our tickets did not work on the Hovercraft. Our tickets worked on the catamaran which ran from Portsmouth Harbour - the terminal and the stop after the one we actually got off at - to Ryde Pierhead, from where we would pick up an Island Line train to carry us back down the pier to the Esplanade. None of this had been explained by the National Rail website or the Epsom Station ticket office. Which last should perhaps have been expected, given that Epsom Station is run by Southern Trains.

But we were not to be baulked of our ride on a Hovercraft and paid the supplement of £12 each, to be whisked across the Solent in about ten noisy minutes, half the time of the catamaran crossing. While our usual crossing by the Whitelink car ferry to Fishbourne, a creek a few miles down the road from Ryde, takes forty five minutes or so.

On the way back, a few days later, we travelled by the route to which our tickets entitled us. Slightly delayed at Guildford, but otherwise fine. The delay at Guildford was, I believe, a knock on from the disruption to services caused by passengers on a train somewhere near Wimbledon mistaking someone spouting revelations from our Bible - four horses of the apocalypse and all that sort of thing - for a Muslim terrorist and climbing down onto the track in an attempt to escape. I also believe that the someone was subsequently released without charge.

A proper sort of provincial railway station, from the glory days of rail. From the glory days of Portsmouth and Southsea.

Boarding the hovercraft. I was very impressed by the size and length of the propeller shafts, which reminded me that the propellers are doing a lot of work, although perhaps not at much as their underwater cousins.

The view from the front. That is to say, not much as there was a lot of spray.

Back on the dry land in front of Ryde Esplanade.

View of a chunk of Ryde Hoverport, with the pier behind. Maybe with a bit of catamaran visble to the right of the right hand hovercraft's mast. Certainly with a Whitelink ferry to the right of that, in the middle of the solent.

Lunch on landing took the form of a substantial and satisfying portion of special noodles from the Hong Kong Kitchen. Plus some bean sprouts which would have been better had they not been doused in some grey source. They also sold Mövenpick ice cream, a brand I have not come across since they used to run a rather unusual restaurant in a basement in Bressenden Place, not far from Baby Ben. I think it is a gym now. While Mövenpick seems to be really about hotels. See references 2 and 3.

The unusual bed head decoration in our hotel room.

A proper picture of a hovercraft in a corridor in our hotel.

What we went for. Not really visible in this snap, but Portsmouth was very pretty in the early evening light. Taken while walking east along Ryde Esplanade, towards Seaview.

I wasn't able to get a snap of the catamaran on return, but we did come across a couple of ancient cranes on the pierhead, one of which is snapped above, probably not used nowadays to lift the cars on and off the ferry. But they were built in Chatteris, near Cambridge, which I had always thought to be a town of cauliflowers and gangmasters rather than engineering outfits building cranes.

PS: while typing this post, my laptop suddenly sprang into audible life with some very irritating advertisement. The sort of noisy and breathless rubbish you have to put up with on radios and televisions. I think it may be to do with the tendency of my otherwise splendid newish-to-me Elitebook to do funny things when you hit a wrong key. It must be a lot more wired up that the basic Pavilion that it replaced. Otherwise, I remain very happy with it. See reference 1.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/a-new-departure.html.

Reference 2: https://www.moevenpick-icecream.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.movenpick.com/en/.