Across the Solent

At the Ryde Castle Hotel with C&D for 9am, where we indulged in a full cooked breakfast. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a hotel breakfast, but I can wholly recommend their full English: the bacon and sausages were of high quality and were delicious. Set me up quite well for the rest of the day.

We walked to the ‘transport interchange’ to pick up the bus to Busy Bee’s Garden Centre. It’s ready for Christmas, and their Christmas World store is almost a whole floor of lights, Santas, and all sorts of lovely Christmas decorations (including singing reindeer). If you wanted to go full-on festive, it’s the place to be. We also stopped for a tea, and I had a cheese scone, which was enormous. I really didn’t need it after my hearty breakfast. Very impressed with the efficiency of their café operation.

Then, C&D took a bus back to their hotel in Ryde. We went to Tesco to buy dinner and followed them back to Ryde on a later bus. We picked them up at the hotel and went to the flat. The weather was on-off torrential rain. We managed to get there between one of the showers and had the afternoon in the flat. They seemed to like it. We watched the Monkton Brook rise. I was convinced it was going to burst its banks, but it didn’t quite spill over at any point in the day. There was a prolonged gap in the showers, and we took a brief walk to the seafront and almost made it back before the heavens opened again. I christened my Wellington boots; I don’t think I have worn any since I was a child.

PY made dinner. We had salmon steaks, roasted new potatoes, and peas. Everybody seemed to like it but quickly started to feel quite sleepy afterwards. We escorted C&D back to their hotel and walked to the seafront to look for firework displays along the south coast. There were a few, but not as many as we had thought. I don’t think the picture captured any of them.