No spinnaker required

What we hadn't realised when we booked a week on the Isle of Wight is that it is Cowes Week, the busiest week in the calendar for this island and, while the sailing is very much focussed on Cowes itself, it affects the ferries and roads around the island.

Anyway, we packed up from Longleat in good time and got to Southampton for our ferry with an hour to spare, which was in stark contrast to the journey from home a week earlier. Once on the island, we were led astray by some sparse directions to the caravan site combined with a lack of understanding on the part of our Sat Nav that we were towing a caravan and therefore single track roads might represent the shortest route but also likely to get us well and truly stuck.

Having pitched and set up the awning, we headed out to Ryde on the north side of the island for a look around and some tea. We realised that this is the part of the IOW that we could see from Southsea last year when we stayed that side of The Solent so had tea on the beach looking back towards Portsmouth and Southsea.

To facilitate a decent blip, I am most grateful to the captain of the Oceana for popping along and allowing me to capture both it and the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth in one single shot.

By the way, the competition today included a shot of the Red Arrows display over at Cowes but it lost out as the distance between Cowes and Ryde (just under 7 miles) coupled with the fact that I was shooting into the evening sun, meant that there was insufficient definition and contrast in the shot to make it interesting.

Finally, the good news is that the fact that you are reading this means that there is a wi-fi service at this site (yay!!!).