So, in full disclosure, I have not just been to the IoW, this was last year and I may have forgotten to post about it.
I managed to pick a day to depart that was one of the hottest of the year, so hot that the trains were reduced to only 25 mph in case the tracks melted. On the bright side this did mean that my entire £70 ticket was eventually refunded as it took hours to get there rather than an hour ish. I had opted to traverse the Solent by hovercraft, which was all kinds of awesome, as I believe it is the last public hovercraft service in the world. It is quick too.
When I got to Ryde, it was a huge wait for my next train so I went for a paddle and tried to cool off a bit. It is also worth noting that I had not booked a hotel or anywhere to stay at this point, so was just hoping to find something when I got to Sandown.
Train eventually took me across the island to Sandown, where I was very disappointed to find that the pub that used to be opposite the train station there had long since closed (apparently decades ago). It was a very sweaty walk into the main hotel district so I wandered until I found one with vacancies and got myself settled. No aircon or even fans, in a room that was thirty-five degrees hotter than the surface of Mercury. Was good to be near a beach though, and the bar served cold beer and had a rooftop terrace.
That night, when I took in an evening constitutional , there was a blood moon. People were gathered all across the beachfront to see it. I tried to get some pics of it but was not happy with my results.
I also started getting the suspicion that my ‘Pro’ camera was no longer up to the task at hand. I realised that by now it was over a decade old and although it had a Leica Lens, this was no longer enough. Plus I broke the only memory card that I had brought with me. I drank another beer and decided that was a problem for tomorrow, and I would lay sweating all night in a boiling room whilst morons on mopeds raced each other up and down the road outside of my window.