I left the house at 7:50am and was in the office an hour later. For some reason, it surprised me how fast the journey was this morning. We had a bit of a show and tell first thing and I had my one-to-one with my boss, but the primary reason for being in the office was all day workshop. This is the kind of work that I really do like coming in to the office for because we get to work as a team and discuss things to find a reasonable position. The office allows us to draw things on whiteboards and pick at the detail a little more than we seem to be able to do on video calls. Was nice to be in a room with people.

This is also the first time I’ve attempted to get back to the island from the office, so I blocked out the very end of my day to stop anybody booking a meeting that might cause me to miss my connection. I need to be on the train from Waterloo no later than 6pm in order to make the ferry connection. Before the pandemic there were later ferries to the island from Portsmouth Harbour, and of course, I could take the car ferry option if I was delayed, but I do prefer the catamaran and would like to try and make it each time I have to travel down from London. 

Because the workshop ran to time, I was able to do a little bit of work in the office before making my way to Waterloo. I gave myself about 20 minutes at the station before boarding the 5:30pm train south. I made the connection very easily and the crossing was quite pleasant.  The train was in the platform at Ryde Pier Head when we arrived and I boarded the train and sat by the connecting door. I’m not sure why I took the seat because it was opposite the luggage rack, but nobody disturbed me on the journey and the train was very quiet. I know these trains have only been used for a few weeks, but they still are quite impressive to be on board compared to the old bone shakers that used to run on this line. 

Back to the Airbnb by about 8:30 where PY had made some dinner and we settled in for a few hours. I’m actually fairly impressed how easy the journey was this evening because it was the most testing of all the journeys I’ve had to do because it began in the office in London. It does show that if everything runs to time then this is a quite straightforward commute. The problem will be if something goes wrong at some stage because the options remain fairly limited.