The Isle of Wight and the lost trousers

A catalogue of disasters on a simple weekend break and a symphony of “lost”…..

Maria’s view

I was very excited when Alex proposed to spend a weekend in The Isle of Wight, I had never been before so it sounded like a pretty relaxing place to go as well as one more English place checked off my “list of places to visit”.

If you have read previous posts, you would have noticed that when I am traveling with Alex I leave most of the logistics to her as she is pretty good at doing that …Errrmmmm…well…we are humans and from time to time we all make mistakes , ones more often than others and what happened on this trip was quite exceptional and unusual, the entire weekend was an adventure.

The plan was leaving early on Saturday morning by car and spend the night on The Isle of Wight, well, you can only spend the night in a place if the date of the booking matches with the date you are going to be in that place, obviously.
It was quite funny (for me) when Alex spoke on the phone with the lady where we were supposed to stay over and we realised on a Friday night that we didn’t have any accommodation for the weekend and the ticket for the ferry was already purchased. So, Alex after kicking herself because she made an unusual mistake, immediately went for plan B (she always has a plan B, and C and D and, and, and….) which was trying to book a different place to stay the night, then we were quite surprised when we saw that the places we were looking at where all booked…ok, never mind let’s try to find a place where to stay on the entire island, there has to be somewhere….Nope, nothing came up… all booked, booked and booked “What the hell was going on there?”. The answer would have been simpler if we were 20 years younger as we would have known that the weekend that we chose to visit The Island, it was the weekend where a popular rock festival, which happens once a year, was taking place on the island on that weekend….Well done us!!! (Clap, clap, clap).

So we went for plan C, carry on with our visit to the island, spend the day there and come back to the Mainland where we would spend the night in Bournemouth with no problems with accommodation.

We drove to get the ferry at Portsmouth, again, if you have read previous posts, I have already mentioned about the crazy Italian driving skills of Alex, who despite of being a good driver, she loves to speed up a little bit after being stopped at a traffic light, so, just to add a bit more of emotion to our weekend, after the bit of a hassle with the accommodation, we were not sure if we would have been caught on a speed camera on our way to the ferry on one of these slow speed tricky city roads.

The journey on the ferry was very nice and relaxing (it takes under an hour to reach The Isle of Wight), well it was very relaxing for me not for Alex, who was getting things from the boot and first of all she thought she had lost the camera battery and it got worse when she thought she lost her trousers, now please, can someone explain to me how is it possible to lose your trousers while you are wearing them? You can imagine the laughter, I am still laughing remembering the situation. Amazing.

We arrived on the island safely, finally. The scenery was very beautiful, all green in contrast with the blue of the sea and we saw a lot of people ready for the festival, you could tell by the clothes they were wearing and the whole vibe.

We found a car park in the middle of nothing, I have always been surprised about the prices of parking in London which I find way too expensive, anyway, the thing is that it didn’t cross my mind that in a remote place, right in the middle of nowhere we would have to still pay for it. Alex should have been thinking still at that point about the initial no accommodation, the possible fine for speeding (which never happened), the losses of the camera battery and trousers…a lot of distractions to even consider the payment of parking in a field in the middle of nowhere. Oooppppsss it happened! A fine was found when we came back from our walk. Jeeeezzz why everything has to happen on the same weekend?.

At least we can tell that we enjoyed our walk on the island, it was worth of the visit. The scenery was very pretty, I love this combination of green fields and sea as it reminds me the place I was born, Asturias, I feel like I can breathe pure air, but get ready to enjoy the nature in its pure form because, who needs a toilet made by a human where there are plenty of natural bushes around?.

After all the, say, incidents, before we left the island we stopped for a well deserved dinner, I love to have meals in local places, we made a good choice here, hip hip hurray!. You don’t have to think that everything is going to be crazy in here 😉

We spent the night in a hotel chain in Bournemouth where we could enjoy the most expensive G&T of our lives in relation to price and place, I suppose you could always close your eyes and think you were in The Shard with a stunning view of London while enjoying your drink, but to be honest, we where not in the Shard or anywhere near, we were in a normal place, neither especially pretty or ugly and when the waiter showed us the receipt, I was sipping my very expensive drink and my reaction was laughing so hard that drink spurted out of my mouth while we were dying of laughter. Maria! Very expensive drink to waste like that.

After all the minor misfortunes we had over the weekend, we spent the Sunday relaxing in Bournemouth and surprisingly nothing exciting happened to us on our way back home.

Lovely island but take this little advice, try to avoid the weekend of the music festival unless you would like to join the party.

Alex’s view

Where do I start? Where? Like in the best practice, I will start at the beginning. This was actually the second trip Maria and I undertook together. You would have through that I would have taken this as a lessons learnt, but as you have seen from the previous posts, humans like to persevered in their errors.
The plan was simple. I had booked a hotel on the Isle of Wight, I was going to meet Maria at my office in Canary Wharf. It started with Maria ringing me from the exit of the underground and advising me she was lost. No surprise there. However, what was somewhat surprising, was her inability to stop and remain stationary while one is directing her. This results in erroneous directions because:

Me: “Maria what can you see?”
Maria: “A bank.”
For those of you not familiar with Canary Wharf, it is a bunch of sky scrapers inhabited primarily by Financial Institutions. So this really did not narrow it down for me.
Me: “which bank?”
Maria: “I don’t know.”
Me: “Look up at the top of the building and read the name.”
Maria: “JPMorgan”
Me: “Ok, you are in the opposite side of the Wharf, looking at the JPMorgan building entrance, turn left, away from the DLR…”
Maria: “Now I see HSBC.”
Me: “erm… that is not possible as that was directly opposite and across not left?”
Maria: “I didn’t turn left. I hate this place…..”
45 minutes later I hung up, rang her other half and told him to go get her as I had given up. I had been conducting the call looking out of the window of the 27th floor, in the perverse hope I could mentally send out directional waves. When I turned around, a handful of colleagues were left in the office, all looking at me thunderstruck. The general question was: “tell us you will be map reading on the way down to the Isle of Wight otherwise we won’t expect you on Monday.” And this is how Maria’s reputation was cemented in Financial Services. This was only so we could meet up, have dinner and go back to my house ready for departure the following morning.

We had a few contretemps in relation to the hotel booking, I mean.. what’s a date between friends and also… who cares about the festival? Minor details…

The Isle of Wight has a breath-taking scenery and is utterly perfect for walks. We took a long four hour walk from Freshwater Bay to The Needles which was truly lovely if you prepare yourself not to need a toilet. We were lucky with the weather as the rain spared us. There is no cover on the walk so once you are out there, be prepared. However, you will be richly rewarded by scenery and wildlife. The villages are also so very quaint and you can find some really delightful little cafes and pubs. Well worth getting lost in. We had dinner at the Wheatsheaf in Yarmouth , which had a very interesting array of burgers. The Brie and Chorizo was divine and the staff was so very friendly which made it all the more worthwhile.

The car parking attendants are brutal. You may think the car park is free and in the middle of no where, but you would be utterly wrong. There will be a sign, behind a bush with parking charges and SAS style parking attendants ready to fast rope from a helicopter to place a fine on your vehicle the very moment you leave it. I speak from personal experience here.

As to hotels….. sore point as I booked for the wrong date on the weekend of the festival so not another room to be found on the entire island, and had to therefore revert to a prominent hotel chain in Bournemouth, which I would certainly not recommend. It is very IKEA like, with a shockingly poor breakfast in a very unhygienic self service layout and the most exorbitantly priced gin and tonic in the land. 18 pounds and they did not even bother with a slice of lemon. So, if you must, stay the night, but whatever you do, do not get a drink.

The ferry to and from the Island is also very comfortable, aside from loosing my trousers in a manner which is simply not to be contemplated further, the trip went smoothly enough. In essence this trip has bene a symphony of “lost”. Lost trousers (while I was wearing them), lost reservations, lost the car, parking fines, lost camera battery, and obviously Maria got lost in Canary Wharf which is what kicked it all off….

So overall, definitely recommend the trip but do keep your trousers under control. That is all I have to say. Trousers… slippery little things.