Tuesday, 20 February 1996. You will remember (if you read my account of yesterday's wanderings - or you were alive at the time and have an extremely good memory) that the weather forecast for the week had said wintry weather was moving towards us from the east.
Well it arrived overnight! This was our early morning view when we opened the curtains to gaze bleary-eyed at the new day from our Southsea hotel.
As I drew the curtains back a couple of ships were just coming into Portsmouth and I grabbed the camera to take the shots here. We decided that seeing as it had snowed and the worst weather was supposed to be to the east, we would not travel towards Dover as we had planned but would instead take the ferry over to the Isle of Wight. It was our last night at the Glendower Hotel so we gathered bags, had breakfast and set off for the ferry terminal.
The pic shows us in lane 10 of the ferry queue. Once in, there there's not a lot of chance of changing your mind and you don't find out the charges until you are in the queue and go to book. No such thing as Internet on the go back in those days!
Staying in your car is not allowed and most people went into the lounge deck but we were made of sterner - oh well... stupider - stuff! We stood on the top deck and watched as Portsmouth slipped out of sight behind us. The open deck was the equivalent of being on the roof of a three storey building. The wind could be described as icy! We stayed on the deck, watching the officers in the bridge and watching the few craft that passed us on the 35 minute journey. We saw a few other ferries and one hovercraft - which turned out to be the only one of the day crossing the Solent.
Having got to the Isle of Wight we decided to drive around the coast road in an anti-clockwise direction. We had to miss out Cowes due to roadworks which took us down almost to the centre of the island and we eventually made it back to the coast road, calling at Yarmouth just in time for lunch which we had in the Gossips Cafe at the head of the small pier.
The wind here was absolutely ferocious. Sitting in the cafe, we were over the beach and although the tide wasn't properly in, the wind whipped up the waves enough for them to cover the beach and crash up the sea wall behind us. A collection of yachts and boats were piled on the beach, in danger one would think of being dragged unmanned into the sea. The whistling sound of the wind through their rigging made conversation next to impossible.
Despite the wind we clung onto each other in an attempt to stay upright and had a short - a very short - wander. The carved plaque was on the window of the Town Hall.
Due to the extreme weather we were back in the car after 15 minutes look round and heading west towards The Needles. Snow was in the air. By the time we got to the Needles it was in the air, on the ground, floating on the sea and blowing in the wind. Especially blowing in the wind...
I wasn't going all that way in freezing temperatures to come away without some sort of record of the attempt, so I braved three inches of snow at The Needles in order to get the photos. Snow slipped down the inside of my shoe to confirm how stupid I was...
We drove all the way round the island stopping every time we found something interesting - that would be twice then... Not that the Isle of Wight doesn't have lots of lovely places to visit and fabulous views, it does. But we were sticking to the coastal road and therefore missing places like Carisbrook Castle and any other inland attractions such as gardens and amusement parks which were quite understandably closed in February anyway. Views out to sea were limited to a few yards of swirling snowflakes. You get the idea. The first place we stopped was at a pearl shop where I bought Miss Franny a few grains of grit that some oyster had vomitted over - or whatever it is they do. The second place was here where the sun came out briefly, the sheer novelty of which made us stop and get out of the car long enough for the blood to freeze in our veins, forcing us back into the car again. I have no idea where this is.
And so by mid afternoon we were almost back at our starting point and admiring the hovercraft parked up at Ryde. We could have looked for accomodation in Ryde, but it was just as cold there as it had been at Yarmouth and not really fit for wandering about on foot.
We caught the four o'clock ferry back to the mainland and drove westwards until we reached Bournemouth, where we found somewhere to stay for the night.
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