James Salter

Because you can’t drink out of a person

Yesterday I drove down to Portsmouth to meet up with Tara and Shashi for a day trip to the Isle of Wight. Despite the Island’s reputation for being the bit of England where the rich go to retire, we still found more than enough to do (even if most of our planning didn’t take place until we were on the ferry!).

Isle of Wight in the distance

Our first stop on the Island was Osborne House, where Queen Victoria spent most of her time after Prince Albert died. Here we learnt a lot of interesting stuff: you can’t drink out of a person, walled gardens are exactly what they say they are, statues of humans don’t have pupils but dogs do, nine of the 18 children broke cups and disappeared, the antelope lived in a separate house, and they do sound like Brazilian pirates.

Osborne House

Taking pictures of the view from the terrace

After lunch in East Cowes we headed over to Alum Bay. Unfortunately a lot was being wound down at the end of the season, including the chair lift down to the beach which was closed. Therefore, our visit was quite short but we did stop to watch the glass blowing and pick up some pick n mix from the sweet factory.

Alum Bay

Tara had seen there was a garlic farm on the Island and we all thought it would be good to take a look. It wasn’t the easiest place to find, being way off the main road down a steep single track road, but was well worth the effort. Anybody coming around to mine for a meal in the next few weeks is quite likely to get garlic butter and garlic mint sauce (maybe with a few other ingredients thrown in too).

Garlic Farm

By then it was near the end of the day and we just had time to head off to Ryde for some Chinese before catching the ferry back across to the mainland.

Ryde Pier at sunset

If we don’t mention my mammoththree and a half hour drive home down the foggy back roads of southern England, the day couldn’t have been a lot better. Good fun, even if you’re not 80.