Hey don't mock me for missed out commas!
I can't promise it will be well written (I'll try and do my old english teacher proud!), but I'll give it a shot tomorrow
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So as mentioned, I took a mini break with my girlfriend (Abi) to the Isle of Wight. It started off with an early alarm on Monday 29th July (about 8am I seem to believe), before I got myself up and showered. I quickly packed my (well, mum's) Mini Cooper S, before setting off for the M25 at about 10am. Fortunately I managed to get on the M25 well after rush hour, but it seemed to be stop start for most of the way. I stopped off at Abi's (in Guildford) at about 11:30 to pick her up, and we were back on our way at about midday, all still on time for our ferry to IOW at 14:00. The journey on from Guildford was pretty quick, apart from the Police deciding to randomly divert us through the centre of Petersfield, which I'm sure everyone was very grateful for (apparently it was a 'police incident'). The rest of the drive was pretty boring and we got to Portsmouth in good time.
After queuing up for ages in the car for the ferry, it completely took me by surprise that we were suddenly boarding, I think I looked a bit stupid to people around me, scrabbling for the car keys and re adjusting my seat! I drove onto the ferry (I was so nervous about that!), before parking up the car at the front of the top level. I didn't get the name of the ferry, was too busy trying not to crash onto it! We made our way up onto the deck, and I went in search of a sofa, but just as I sat down on one, a family came and surrounded me, rubbish
We went up onto the very top deck instead, where it was seriously windy!
The ferry was shorter than I expected, and we were at Fishbourne after no time at all. After forgetting to turn my engine on when leaving the ferry (looking like an idiot again), we made our way off and to our log cabin, just outside Newport. We decided to stop in the county town to find something to eat, but after running into huge traffic on the outskirts, we settled for a KFC just outside the town centre (and buying elephant post it notes from Staples because why not?
). We were at our very own log cabin by 4pm, and I could finally sit down at relax!
We were on a small farm just to the West of Newport, and even though we were in the centre of the island, you could still see Portsmouth from the outside! I just love how small the Isle of Wight is.
We bought some food and alcohol before making dinner, and then heading out down to Shanklin, just as it was getting dark. Parking up on the esplanade, we walked down the seafront and to the Shanklin Chine, which was a reasonable price at £4. It's a little ravine in from the coast which a small river has cut away from the cliff. It's completely covered with woodland and vegetation, which is really pretty. The sun was just setting and it was completely deserted, so I feel like it was worth the £4. We walked back down the seafront and wasted way too much money in the Amusements (I know you never win but they're so damn addicting
).
On the Tuesday we got up relatively early (10am!), before listening to Popmaster on Radio 2, and we made our way back down to Shanklin. We stopped off in a small village called Godshill, which had an amazing shop called Chocolate Island, complete with a small chocolate cafe behind it. We stopped there to get a chocolate orange milkshake and some chocolate churros to share (so chocolatey!). I don't think I've had such a tasty meal in so long, it was seriously so tasty, I'd recommend to anyone who even remotely likes chocolate!
We then carried on South East to Shanklin, where we decided to go to a small cafe just to eat something substantial, so we entered a small cafe next to some amusements, and ordered a plate of chicken nuggets and chips. An hour later we were regretting this as we still hadn't received it! Really was the worst service I've ever seen, someone was only informed that they didn't actually have the thing they wanted about half an hour after they ordered it, it made both of us pretty angry. We went for a quick game of crazy golf (where Abi cheated her way to winning
) to calm ourselves down, before heading back to Newport and back home for a while.
I'll finish this off another time, hopefully the writing is quite interesting (I'm pretty tired right now!). I'm out all day tomorrow to Paris and Brussels (there'll probably be another trip report up soon for that), so sometime later this week
After hanging around the cabin for a while we decided to get a takeaway, and we decided a curry was a good idea (when is it ever not a good idea?
I ended up having three curries in the whole week, oops!), so we popped into Newport to find one that was recommended to us, called Nanab curry, on St James Street, so we parked up and walked down to road to find it closed, and a sign saying they had moved down the road. We found the new takeaway, and while we were reading the menu, they referred us down the road again, to an actual restaurant called Tamarind, which turned out to be cheaper than Nanab! We ordered the curry and took it back home, before settling back down on the sofa and watching a romcom (I'm a sucker for them!), Valentine's Day I think it was. The curry was really nice, and we got free poppadoms and a free plain naan which went down a treat
Would definitely recommend!
On the Wednesday we got up really early and listened to popmaster in the car (we literally turned the radio on as the first question was being read out
), as I drove to the Isle of Wight Zoo in Sandown. We parked up and bought the tickets, as well as an extra fee (an excess
) to feed the wallabies as well. We wandered around the zoo together, personal highlights was a spider monkey (which even used it's tail to swing around by, love it), and the meerkats were adorable as always. After getting annoyed at one of the zoo employees saying that Madagascar was a Disney film (Dreamworks is not Disney!), we popped over to the wallaby enclosure to feed them carrots, which was incredibly cute. You could also stroke them and hold their hands, which I definitely wasn't expecting!
After that we grabbed something to eat (the cafe in the zoo was really nice and quick), before we rounded off with the large cat exhibits, before going into Sandown. After some tricky parallel parking (I really can't do it, especially not up a hill :cry: ), we popped into The Rock Shop (we definitely have a joint sweet tooth), where I got a sugar mouse in the first time in forever. After popping down to the pier briefly, we went back to the car and parked in a residential street next to the station, and we went in, catching the first train up to Ryde Pier Head, which turned out to be the 1544, ran by 483007. I loved the Class 483, I remember going on them when I was young, and they were just as bouncy as I remembered
I bought an Island Line day ranger for Abi (it was about 10p more than a return with no Y/P Railcard I thought I'd pay a little extra for the cool ticket!), and a return from Sandown to Ryde Pier Head for me. We went out to the Pier Head and looked out to Portsmouth, before deciding to get back on the train to Ryde Esplanade, as it was pretty cloudy and we didn't fancy the walk!
We walked along the shops in Ryde before coming to the conclusion that it was a bit of a dive really, so we sat down on some grass next to the sea and chatted for a little while. After toying with the idea of a game of bowling, we decided against it and got the train back from Ryde Esplanade back to Sandown, the 17:52, ran by an equally bouncy 483009. We picked the car back up before heading back to Newport, and the Satnav took us down a beautiful road that seemed to go straight over a large hill, so you could look straight over the island, it was so great in the evening sun. Looking it up now, the road is called Ashley Road for anyone interested. We were trying to find somewhere to eat for the evening, but when we were circling the town centre, all we could see was an abundance of pubs! Eventually Abi spotted a Chinese which looked decent, so we grabbed a 3 hour parking space, and headed in. After waiting for 20 minutes for a table for two (even though half of the restaurant was empty), they put us on a table for four anyway (rendering the wait pretty much useless). The service was good to start with, but we were waiting 30 minutes for a starter, and about an hour for the main course, which wasn't actually that amazing, which was a definite disappointment. We decided not to get a dessert (it would have taken another hour or so!), so we popped over the road to grab a McFlurry
The Chinese restaurant was called the Ming Garden for any future reference.
Thursday was our final day, so after moving all of our stuff out at the unbearably early time of 9am, we left the cabin for the last time and went to the Garlic Farm, a whole farm and shop dedicated to Garlic! It was really awesome, with loads of Garlic related products, from Garlic BBQ sauce to Garlic Jam, definitely worth a visit!
Definitely the most useful education centre I've ever visited
After finishing that, we popped back down to Chocolate Island in Godshill for a couple more chocolate churros and to waste any left over money on some more chocolate, before we left for the ferry, the Satnav estimating our arrival time at the ferry to be at 12:29, when we needed to be there by 12:30, the most tense drive of my life
Fortunately everything seemed to go my way, overtook a bus before it slowed us down too much, and we arrived with time to spare. The rest of the journey went totally to plan, and I'm informed by Abi that the boat back was on MV St Cecilia.
I suppose I'll do a quick round up of best/worst things just to sum everything up
Best Activities: IOW Zoo, Shanklin Seafront, The Island Line (of course!)
Worst Activities: Ryde in general!
Best Places to Eat: Tamarind Curry, KFC
Worst Places to Eat: The cafe next to the amusements in Shanklin, Ming Garden (both for horrible service)
Thanks for reading, hope it was relatively interesting!
hock: 
