Febstuary - London and the Isle of Wight
Right, clearly I fail at dot points.
So after we got home from an amazing week at the snow, I promptly went back to work. Wonderboyf took himself out in old London town most days, seeing the sights, bringing me medicinal hot chocolates and hugs, sitting of an evening, waiting for me to finish work. I'm sure it wasn't that exciting a week, but he was in London and enjoyed that as far as i could tell.
That weekend we went to visit the Isle of Wight. We had originally thought about going a bit further abroad, but we had a wedding to go to on the Monday so we didn't want to get stuck on the wrong end of a delayed/ missed/ cancelled flight.
One of the main, and terribly amusing attractions was the opportunity to travel to the island by hovercraft. Yes. Hovercraft. It wasn't as amazing as I'd hoped, mainly because we were all enclosed in the craft and couldn't see out the windows for all the dried salt spray. But it amused us.
We actually had arrived on the Isle having not booked accommodation. So our first stop was a pub with wifi and then I called around a couple of places I had found online before we'd left. On the second go I managed to get us a room in Appley Manor, ooh err! We delighted in staying in a 'Manor' - actually it was a really nice place. We unceremoniously dumped our gear and promptly walked back in to town while there was still light.
We went for a walk along the 'beach', and checked out the little beach hut type things, though I think they were more like little stores or storage than changing huts. The also came across what we termed the 'display tower' a medieval style tower complete with mini turret and bay window - like an architect was just showing off what they 'could do'. We came back past a small lake where hundred of birds - swans, geese, ducks, terns etc were following a couple around the edge who were feeding them with bags of crumbs etc. When their food ran out, the bulk of the swans started following us around assuming we'd be the next meal dispensers, but alas, we were just there to take photos and be on our merry way. Eventually we made our way to a pub and had a very average dinner but did have a good chat with the bar tender who was a lass form somewhere in the US, and an old bloke who recommended a small Ale House for Stu.
After a solid night's sleep and a proper English Breakfast, we headed off the next day by bus (we'd failed to think about hiring a car on Saturday and discovered that morning that everything is closed on Sunday's especially in winter!) to Carisbrooke to have a look-see at their castle. It was a fairly long public bus ride, but we amused ourselves pointing out attempted mass murders to each other, and other un-p.c. collective noun gags. We spotted, but didn't get to stop at the Owl and Monkey Haven - an unlikely set of bedfellows we thought.
We did however spend a couple of hours thoroughly exploring the Carisbrooke Castle and it's grounds. Quite an impressive, and significantly intact example actually. There is a huge bowling green, a large hall, a museum, apartments in ruins, cannons, donkeys that still draw water from the well, all kinds of castley things! And it was a glorious sunny day so it was lovely to be out and about. The trudge there and back through muddy and slippery terrain was at times amusing and at other times just plain annoying. We did however come across a most incongruous closed road, closed predominantly as it was no longer a road, but a stream. No, really.
Eventually we had to head back to Ryde to collect our bags and catch the Hovercraft back to the mainland. We caught the train up to Woking and went to stay at the hotel/ venue the wedding would be at, we figured arriving the night before was sensible and allowed us not to rush in the morning (and remove the threat of being late/ getting lost).
And I won't tell you about how lovely a place it was, that can be in the next post ;)
But all in all, we quite enjoyed our mini Isle of Wight adventure :D
So after we got home from an amazing week at the snow, I promptly went back to work. Wonderboyf took himself out in old London town most days, seeing the sights, bringing me medicinal hot chocolates and hugs, sitting of an evening, waiting for me to finish work. I'm sure it wasn't that exciting a week, but he was in London and enjoyed that as far as i could tell.
That weekend we went to visit the Isle of Wight. We had originally thought about going a bit further abroad, but we had a wedding to go to on the Monday so we didn't want to get stuck on the wrong end of a delayed/ missed/ cancelled flight.
One of the main, and terribly amusing attractions was the opportunity to travel to the island by hovercraft. Yes. Hovercraft. It wasn't as amazing as I'd hoped, mainly because we were all enclosed in the craft and couldn't see out the windows for all the dried salt spray. But it amused us.
We actually had arrived on the Isle having not booked accommodation. So our first stop was a pub with wifi and then I called around a couple of places I had found online before we'd left. On the second go I managed to get us a room in Appley Manor, ooh err! We delighted in staying in a 'Manor' - actually it was a really nice place. We unceremoniously dumped our gear and promptly walked back in to town while there was still light.
We went for a walk along the 'beach', and checked out the little beach hut type things, though I think they were more like little stores or storage than changing huts. The also came across what we termed the 'display tower' a medieval style tower complete with mini turret and bay window - like an architect was just showing off what they 'could do'. We came back past a small lake where hundred of birds - swans, geese, ducks, terns etc were following a couple around the edge who were feeding them with bags of crumbs etc. When their food ran out, the bulk of the swans started following us around assuming we'd be the next meal dispensers, but alas, we were just there to take photos and be on our merry way. Eventually we made our way to a pub and had a very average dinner but did have a good chat with the bar tender who was a lass form somewhere in the US, and an old bloke who recommended a small Ale House for Stu.
After a solid night's sleep and a proper English Breakfast, we headed off the next day by bus (we'd failed to think about hiring a car on Saturday and discovered that morning that everything is closed on Sunday's especially in winter!) to Carisbrooke to have a look-see at their castle. It was a fairly long public bus ride, but we amused ourselves pointing out attempted mass murders to each other, and other un-p.c. collective noun gags. We spotted, but didn't get to stop at the Owl and Monkey Haven - an unlikely set of bedfellows we thought.
We did however spend a couple of hours thoroughly exploring the Carisbrooke Castle and it's grounds. Quite an impressive, and significantly intact example actually. There is a huge bowling green, a large hall, a museum, apartments in ruins, cannons, donkeys that still draw water from the well, all kinds of castley things! And it was a glorious sunny day so it was lovely to be out and about. The trudge there and back through muddy and slippery terrain was at times amusing and at other times just plain annoying. We did however come across a most incongruous closed road, closed predominantly as it was no longer a road, but a stream. No, really.
Eventually we had to head back to Ryde to collect our bags and catch the Hovercraft back to the mainland. We caught the train up to Woking and went to stay at the hotel/ venue the wedding would be at, we figured arriving the night before was sensible and allowed us not to rush in the morning (and remove the threat of being late/ getting lost).
And I won't tell you about how lovely a place it was, that can be in the next post ;)
But all in all, we quite enjoyed our mini Isle of Wight adventure :D