This weekend was the closing weekend of Cowes Week at the Isle of Wight. Cowes Week is apparently the longest running regular regatta in the world starting way back in 1826! but never mind how old the regatta is Sandra and I were more interested in trying to find a hunky dude who owned his own boat who we could marry and sail into the sun set with. Sigh. LOL. That we also got the chance to explore the Isle of Wight was also a bonus.

Photos here.

Cowes

As the journey to the Isle of Wight was going to take a few hours we decided to take Friday afternoon off to get there – and luckily we did because getting to Cowes from Ryde (which was the only place we could find accommodation) proved to be quite a journey with our bus seemingly winding its way through every small nook and cranny between the two towns. Finally, after about an hour on the buss we only had a 5-minute chain ferry crossing the River Medina from East Cowes between us and hunky sailors. By this time it was early evening.

There’s something about islands and crossing the sea that makes me crave scampi so getting dinner was a priority (though lets face it I don’t really need an excuse to chow down …) Cowes was fairly heaving with people so we were lucky to find somewhere relatively quickly to get some scampi. After our meal it was off to find a spot to watch the legendary fireworks. Now I’ve seen some amazing fireworks in my time, most especially at any of the Disney’s I’ve visited, but I must say the fireworks on Friday night were AMAZING. They went on forever and they had these really smart fireworks that finished with smiley faces, or love hearts, and other shapes burned into the sky. Very cool.

Saturday we headed back to Cowes nice and early to catch some sailing action. It was a gorgeous day but those perfect conditions for us land lubbers meant not so perfect conditions out on the water – with not a breeze to stir so the sailing was postponed some. We decided to sign up for a sailing lesson and a spectactor boat ride scheduled later in the afternoon with the hopes that the wind would pick up so after running around to try and find some shoes for sailing (the shoes we got were so sexy), for which we rewarded ourselves by getting some yummy ice-cream, we then staked out a patch of stone to sun ourselves. It was perfect.

Although there are various business offering boat rides about the harbour and you can watch the racing from the shore the spectactor boat is a great way to see the racing up close with the boat taking you right into the action. Its amazing to see the skill of the racers as they weave their way around you. I had no idea what I was looking at but it was nice to be out on a boat … no matter how drenched I got from the waves! Plus Sandra and I got to try out our Shark and Vampire impressions as per the photo to the right. Just go with it.

After some more scampi for lunch and some more sun catching and sailing action watching it was on to the highlight of the day – our sailing lesson! Five of us got taken out on to a I think it was 36 foot boat? or something like that and we each got a turn to take the tiller, work the jibs, and work the main sheet. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be but I get the feeling our boat was pretty much self-sailing! Anyway for a little while at least we could pretend what life could be like on a boat – not too shabby!

Unfortunately though the day ended without Sandra or I finding a hunky guy who owned his own boat. The closest I got was a girl who gave us her VIP drink card with one free drink on it. She was quite friendly. 🙂

The Rest of the Isle of Wight

Sunday we dedicated to exploring the rest of the Isle of Wight. We hadn’t planned on the buses taking us so long to get around so we couldn’t really travel too far from Ryde. We probably could have planned it a bit better but for some reason the tourist office was never open when we were there! So the best option for us seemed to be the Open Bus Tour around the North East area. Here are the things we fit in:

• Robin Hill Country Park. Although boasting the Island’s 3 biggest rides I guess “biggest” has to be put into perspective of all the theme parks I’ve been to in my life and the Time Machine, entertaining I’m sure for the little ones, was a little blah; Colossus, a swinging pirate ship, on the other hand, though not seemingly that big was actually frighteningly good fun; and as for the 3rd biggest ride unfortunately at a critical moment it started drizzling so the 400m Toboggan Run wasn’t running so I couldn’t judge. At the Country Park there are also lots of attractions for the little ones including a Wooden Maze, the Rabbit Run (which consists of lots of really little tunnels) and Squirrel Tower. This is a park probably more for the little ones than the adults though there is no denying it is set in some gorgeous woodland and you may get to seem some of those precious little red squirrels.

• Amazon World Zoo Park. I was actually fairly impressed with this Park, and you can probably tell from the number of photos I took (I couldn’t resist getting a picture of this little one on the right sunning itself), as you got to actually see quite a few unusual endangered creatures including sloths and anteaters (loved the medium-sized ones who appeared to wear overalls – so cute) plus it is a fairly well designed layout which lets you follow everything through in a logical manner without getting too overwhelmed. The birds of prey display was pretty fun as well.

• The Garlic Farm. Though a stop on the bus getting to the Farm involved about mile hike with no footpath! Go there only if you really want to buy all things garlic otherwise you could probably give it a miss as it seemed to be nothing but a, well, farm and shop.

So unfortunately we didn’t really get to visit the bigger attractions on the Isle of Wight like Needles Park and Blackgang Chine nor did we get to ride any bikes which means another visit to the Isle of Wight in the future.

Not that I’m too disappointed if I can indulge in some more really good seafood at reasonable prices and of course the requisite seaside 2p machines!