BazingaTribe
Member
I suppose the inevitable title is 'Ticket to Ryde' but that's probably been done to death.
Anyway, I am having a year of fun with travel. In the past year I've been to Germany, Sweden, Cardiff and am set to go to Tallinn in two weeks and then Uzbekistan in late September, then Helsinki early next year and a fjord cruise next May. I thought I'd squeeze in a short hop to the Isle of Wight because it's right on my doorstep and I'd never been. My parents had a holiday cottage near Swanage and on a clear day you could see all the way to the island, but it remained off my radar.
So I took the train all the way from Basingstoke to Portsmouth Harbour. Nice sleek SWR set, no idea which class but it was one of the comfortable new ones with decent legroom in standard class and power points. I left straight after work, so was in Ryde by sunset -- and what a magnificent, perfect image of the sun it was sinking over the Solent. I understood why early humans must have felt that it was a god -- I'm a spiritual person, and I saw Mount Ararat on my Armenia trip last year, but it was one of those experiences that just made me feel a deep, contented awe after what has been an exhaustingly hot summer. I've got lots of photos but they just don't do it justice.
(Wightlink has probably seen better days but it was a smooth ride. Their seats are not disability friendly -- on the way back I struggled to get out and needed help from another passenger to extricate myself -- but they're very efficient at getting people on and off and the process from both ends is seamless. I had to wait around a bit in Portsmouth but from Ryde I literally walked off the Island Line train, onto the boat, off the boat, onto the Basingstoke train, and then onto the bus at the final end. Luck of the draw -- at the time I was coming home Basingstoke buses home only run half hourly -- but very smooth and very pleasant except the one incident with legroom. And that was probably my own fault for not sitting in the more accessible front rows.)
So the first day, Saturday, I went by bus to Newport, Carisbrooke and Cowes. Southern Vectis has good transport links across the island. I tried to get on the bus to Newport via Ventnor, just to see more scenery, but on learning it would take a long time -- almost two hours -- I decided it would be better just to save that for the train and get to Newport in a straighter manner. I have done the scenic route by public bus thing a few times abroad -- one time from Klaipeda to Kaunas took us all afternoon, but it was more interesting going round by the Kaliningrad border and looking away into the twilight at Russia before heading back inland again. But I only had a weekend because I've basically used up all my AL on my pre-booked foreign trips, and I'm thinking of buying some so I can go to Sweden at Easter to support my friend's stall at Gothcon in Gothenburg. So time was short and I packed in an amazing amount for being there just short of 48 hours.
Carisbrooke was nice and a good walk but you're not here to hear about King Charles' namesake and the exhibition that seemed fixated on raiding not only his laundry basket but that of Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria -- the royal underwear collection is interesting, but I just hope they were cleaned thoroughly before being put out, especially since those belonging to Charles I were apparently what he wore at his execution. (I'm sure they were.)
Anyway...trains on the second day. The IOW steam railway was lovely and the ticket got you all day access, which was very fun and atmospheric. I used to write steampunk fantasy and experiencing train carriages from 1896 was more comfortable than I thought it would be -- particularly because the angle of the seats was sharper than modern ones. (Although they are better sprung!)
The line goes through a lot of woodland and there were dark patches beside the track where I guess some sparks had come adrift, but it was the perfect day for it. I went all the way from Smallbrook to Wootton and back to Haven Street, where there was old-fashioned pub lasagne for lunch. As somewhat uncoordinated and having to use a walking stick to get about due to an ankle injury which has never healed, I got a lot of help from the cafeteria staff. The food was filling enough to last me the rest of the day and a hike up the hill at Ryde to a legendary bookshop. And yeah, the Isle of Wight is quite hilly. Amazing views, but it's Monday morning and my legs are still sore! Good exercise, though.
So the museum at Haven Street is a really good collection of railway locomotives and carriages but also administrative tools like the pigeonholes used to direct luggage services and the waiting room clocks from the post-Beeching cuts. I'm not necessarily into traction -- I'm more about the travel itself -- but it's fascinating how everything fits together.
The Island Line itself was a different matter, however. I got as far as Shanklin, but I think the lasagne was making a bid for freedom. Unsurprisingly in both directions people were in the seats that are standard on most passenger trains and the tube-train style seats were the only ones available. I spent the journey both ways feeling a bit queasy -- the Elizabeth line is similar, but at least on the latter there's more seats in general so you're more likely to get normal seats and the ride is smoother. I got off at Shanklin to stretch my legs, but nothing was open on a Sunday, so I just got back on. The novelty of travelling on something that looked like a tube train (I know it isn't actually a former tube) was unfortunately outweighed by the discomfort of the ride. I am prepared to admit that the heavy meal (taken in the middle of the day so I didn't have to try to get an evening meal later on on the way home, and just as well too) probably made it worse, but I escaped at St Johns Road and hiked uphill to get to that bookshop. (I have put myself in a lot of pain simply for a bookshop on holiday. It's not just getting there that's the problem -- it's getting back. In Armenia the metro made things easier, but Ryde is often straight up and straight down, and while in my youth (when you couldn't have got me up anywhere for love nor money) I could have bounded downhill, now it's like walking on hot coals.
But I got a book on cricket covering the bits I actually paid attention to when my husband was alive (real quote: I knew there must be something wrong because I'm watching England giving Australia a spanking [in the 2019 World Cup] and not enjoying it' and a week later, hooked up to lots of machines and watching the final on hospital TV: I can die happy) and a biography of Tamerlane. Since I'm going to Samarkand in the autumn (and I'm not taking the Afrosayiob -- I want the slow train so I see more of the people and landscape, just like I took the slow South Caucasus stopper in Armenia) I want to know more about the psychotic violence Tamerlane inflicted on people that made Genghis Khan look like a pacifist.
In short -- I've done my first train ride for the sake of a train ride, and it was a fun weekend. I'll definitely be going back to the IOW -- I didn't get to see Osborne House; I did get to Cowes, but it was too hot to do much other than drink coolers in Costa under the air con vent. There's enough to see and do and shops to potter about in for another trip, but the disadvantage of being there on a Sunday was enough that next time I will burn some AL to be there when things are open. But with only four days left unbooked until Easter (we do the 1 April - 31 March thing in the public sector), and a cat who will need her jabs in the autumn, it's something I probably won't get round to until next summer. I've done the trains, but I do love the whole ambience of the place and want to see the western parts.
Anyway, I am having a year of fun with travel. In the past year I've been to Germany, Sweden, Cardiff and am set to go to Tallinn in two weeks and then Uzbekistan in late September, then Helsinki early next year and a fjord cruise next May. I thought I'd squeeze in a short hop to the Isle of Wight because it's right on my doorstep and I'd never been. My parents had a holiday cottage near Swanage and on a clear day you could see all the way to the island, but it remained off my radar.
So I took the train all the way from Basingstoke to Portsmouth Harbour. Nice sleek SWR set, no idea which class but it was one of the comfortable new ones with decent legroom in standard class and power points. I left straight after work, so was in Ryde by sunset -- and what a magnificent, perfect image of the sun it was sinking over the Solent. I understood why early humans must have felt that it was a god -- I'm a spiritual person, and I saw Mount Ararat on my Armenia trip last year, but it was one of those experiences that just made me feel a deep, contented awe after what has been an exhaustingly hot summer. I've got lots of photos but they just don't do it justice.
(Wightlink has probably seen better days but it was a smooth ride. Their seats are not disability friendly -- on the way back I struggled to get out and needed help from another passenger to extricate myself -- but they're very efficient at getting people on and off and the process from both ends is seamless. I had to wait around a bit in Portsmouth but from Ryde I literally walked off the Island Line train, onto the boat, off the boat, onto the Basingstoke train, and then onto the bus at the final end. Luck of the draw -- at the time I was coming home Basingstoke buses home only run half hourly -- but very smooth and very pleasant except the one incident with legroom. And that was probably my own fault for not sitting in the more accessible front rows.)
So the first day, Saturday, I went by bus to Newport, Carisbrooke and Cowes. Southern Vectis has good transport links across the island. I tried to get on the bus to Newport via Ventnor, just to see more scenery, but on learning it would take a long time -- almost two hours -- I decided it would be better just to save that for the train and get to Newport in a straighter manner. I have done the scenic route by public bus thing a few times abroad -- one time from Klaipeda to Kaunas took us all afternoon, but it was more interesting going round by the Kaliningrad border and looking away into the twilight at Russia before heading back inland again. But I only had a weekend because I've basically used up all my AL on my pre-booked foreign trips, and I'm thinking of buying some so I can go to Sweden at Easter to support my friend's stall at Gothcon in Gothenburg. So time was short and I packed in an amazing amount for being there just short of 48 hours.
Carisbrooke was nice and a good walk but you're not here to hear about King Charles' namesake and the exhibition that seemed fixated on raiding not only his laundry basket but that of Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria -- the royal underwear collection is interesting, but I just hope they were cleaned thoroughly before being put out, especially since those belonging to Charles I were apparently what he wore at his execution. (I'm sure they were.)
Anyway...trains on the second day. The IOW steam railway was lovely and the ticket got you all day access, which was very fun and atmospheric. I used to write steampunk fantasy and experiencing train carriages from 1896 was more comfortable than I thought it would be -- particularly because the angle of the seats was sharper than modern ones. (Although they are better sprung!)
The line goes through a lot of woodland and there were dark patches beside the track where I guess some sparks had come adrift, but it was the perfect day for it. I went all the way from Smallbrook to Wootton and back to Haven Street, where there was old-fashioned pub lasagne for lunch. As somewhat uncoordinated and having to use a walking stick to get about due to an ankle injury which has never healed, I got a lot of help from the cafeteria staff. The food was filling enough to last me the rest of the day and a hike up the hill at Ryde to a legendary bookshop. And yeah, the Isle of Wight is quite hilly. Amazing views, but it's Monday morning and my legs are still sore! Good exercise, though.
So the museum at Haven Street is a really good collection of railway locomotives and carriages but also administrative tools like the pigeonholes used to direct luggage services and the waiting room clocks from the post-Beeching cuts. I'm not necessarily into traction -- I'm more about the travel itself -- but it's fascinating how everything fits together.
The Island Line itself was a different matter, however. I got as far as Shanklin, but I think the lasagne was making a bid for freedom. Unsurprisingly in both directions people were in the seats that are standard on most passenger trains and the tube-train style seats were the only ones available. I spent the journey both ways feeling a bit queasy -- the Elizabeth line is similar, but at least on the latter there's more seats in general so you're more likely to get normal seats and the ride is smoother. I got off at Shanklin to stretch my legs, but nothing was open on a Sunday, so I just got back on. The novelty of travelling on something that looked like a tube train (I know it isn't actually a former tube) was unfortunately outweighed by the discomfort of the ride. I am prepared to admit that the heavy meal (taken in the middle of the day so I didn't have to try to get an evening meal later on on the way home, and just as well too) probably made it worse, but I escaped at St Johns Road and hiked uphill to get to that bookshop. (I have put myself in a lot of pain simply for a bookshop on holiday. It's not just getting there that's the problem -- it's getting back. In Armenia the metro made things easier, but Ryde is often straight up and straight down, and while in my youth (when you couldn't have got me up anywhere for love nor money) I could have bounded downhill, now it's like walking on hot coals.
But I got a book on cricket covering the bits I actually paid attention to when my husband was alive (real quote: I knew there must be something wrong because I'm watching England giving Australia a spanking [in the 2019 World Cup] and not enjoying it' and a week later, hooked up to lots of machines and watching the final on hospital TV: I can die happy) and a biography of Tamerlane. Since I'm going to Samarkand in the autumn (and I'm not taking the Afrosayiob -- I want the slow train so I see more of the people and landscape, just like I took the slow South Caucasus stopper in Armenia) I want to know more about the psychotic violence Tamerlane inflicted on people that made Genghis Khan look like a pacifist.
In short -- I've done my first train ride for the sake of a train ride, and it was a fun weekend. I'll definitely be going back to the IOW -- I didn't get to see Osborne House; I did get to Cowes, but it was too hot to do much other than drink coolers in Costa under the air con vent. There's enough to see and do and shops to potter about in for another trip, but the disadvantage of being there on a Sunday was enough that next time I will burn some AL to be there when things are open. But with only four days left unbooked until Easter (we do the 1 April - 31 March thing in the public sector), and a cat who will need her jabs in the autumn, it's something I probably won't get round to until next summer. I've done the trains, but I do love the whole ambience of the place and want to see the western parts.
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