No Planes, several Trains, and not an Automobile in sight!

As you will know if you have read the last entry on the blog, we just spent a weekend over on the lovely Isle of Wight, and by a fortuitous piece of timing the weekend we selected happened to coincide with the Isle of Wight Steam Railway's Autumn beer festival - yes, I promise you that this WAS just by chance, as unlikely as that seems! That in turn sparked a conversation around public transport, and we started wondering quite how many forms of transport it would be possible to use over one weekend on a not-particularly-massive island... 

Of course we needed to get across there first, and we quickly realised that we could start with a great transport mode in the form of the Hovercraft. I'm not certain that either of us had even realised that there was still a hovercraft service running, but once we did you'd best believe we RAN to book it! Unfortunately the day we went over the weather was badly affecting the service, leading to it being throttled back to around half of its top speed - but it was still great fun, and we look forward to doing it again at a faster pace! The plan had been to then use the Island Line train to get ourselves and the rucksack to Sandown to drop the bag at our hotel, but due to the late running Hovercraft from Southsea we quickly realised that a change of plan was sensible so we activated our excellent value 48 hour bus tickets (£19.80 each) and our second mode of transport was the good old local bus. We then stuck with buses for the remainder of Friday as they suited our planned route. 

Island Line train interior 

On Saturday morning we began by heading uphill to Sandown Station to catch an Island Line train. These were the motivation for our original wish to visit the island, as the trains are old London Underground stock - indeed until a few years ago they were the beautiful old 1938 stock, and I do regret not getting there a bit sooner so we could ride those! Now though it is ex District Line stock that I remember being excitingly shiny and new in London in the late 1970's - now they are refurbished and  excitingly shiny and new on the Isle of Wight instead! Trains run around every 40 minutes and go from Ryde Pier Head in the north, to Shanklin in the south. For our first journey we went the couple of stops down to Shanklin for an explore there - down the hill to the Chine, then back up again via the Cliff Lift which saved a LOT of uphill walking! Back to the station then to ride the full length of the line up to Ryde. I shall count the Shanks's Pony used to walk back along the pier to the Esplanade at this stage as well, as mode 5! 

It was then time to revert to the bus to travel along to East Cowes, before walking round the corner to transport mode 6 - the Cowes Floating Bridge - a chain ferry! These are always good fun, and generally like this one a very cheap option too - it cost us £1.50 each and would have been less than that had we not decided to keep our options open about maybe going back across on it - instead we discovered that a rapid walk through the town of West Cowes would get us onto a bus to Wootton Station for the Steam Train to Havenstreet and the beer festival! 

Beers (and millionaires shortbread!) enjoyed, we jumped on another steam train to link with the Island Line at Smallbrook Junction (the only station in the UK which can only be reached by train, apparently - indeed the Island Line only stops there on days when the steam railway is operating) to head back to Shanklin, and then another bus to Ventnor for a lovely wander as the light faded. Final transport for the day was the bus back through to Sandown. 

As soon as we knew about the Vintage Bus event we were determined that Sunday would be our day to enjoy a few of those, so we were pleased that our intended first thing ride through to Shanklin for the walk back to Sandown took the form of a 1956 Open Top bus! Breezy it was, and a little chilly, but with excellent views (and a timely warning about low hanging branches from the conductor!) there really was no better way to travel! Having walked along the seafront back to the hotel, and collected our bag, we then plodded up the hill again to connect with the bus back to Ryde - this time a 1989 former Stagecoach Hampshire option. The Vintage buses were free to ride, and were stopping at the regular stops on their routes to pick up passengers, as our bus passes had by then expired this proved to be an excellent way to travel for our final few hours - although we did buy the event programme as much as anything in order to make a donation to the event. 

Open top bus through Ryde

A Guernsey Bus - just for our good friend Nick! 

Final couple of hours wandering around Ryde then, before a last hop on the Island Line up to the Pier Head (as much as anything else because we could, rather than because we needed to!) and then one final mode of transport in the shape of the Wightlink Fast-Cat Catamaran back to Portsmouth - a great way of getting back across quicker than the traditional ferry.

So - 9 different modes of transport in one weekend trip doesn't feel bad - we had hoped for a couple more, I was keen to do the Chairlift at Alum Bay, and we were both up for a boat trip from there round to Yarmouth, but due to the extremely windy weather neither were operating - so that's something for the future. Whether there would have been any more we could have squeezed in I'm not too sure, something to investigate for our next visit!

Robyn