Scooters, Shopping, and Sunshine

We started the day with a delicious brunch at The Crossing Café. It was bustling with customers, which was great to see since it’s only been open since November. After brunch, we wandered around the shops for a while before heading back to the flat.

We were waiting for the 1 pm scooter parade. The Isle of Wight Scooter Rally, held annually over the August Bank Holiday, is one of the largest events of its kind, drawing around 10,000 scooter enthusiasts from across the UK.

The festival runs for five days, from Thursday to Monday, and is centred around Sandown Airport, where people come together to celebrate scooter culture (whatever that may be). We didn’t attend the main gathering, but for me, the highlight was the Scooter Ride-Out on Sunday. Thousands of scooters paraded across the island, starting in Ryde. It’s quite an impressive sight to see so many scooters passing along the Esplanade.

Although in the paper the organisers say they worked closely with local authorities to ensure a smooth experience, we still saw a few frustrated drivers trying to navigate through the continuous stream of scooters, with plenty of shouting involved. Honestly, they should just close the Esplanade during the parade.

After the parade, we took the bus to The Busy Bee Garden Centre to pick up some artificial flowers since real ones wouldn’t survive in the flat. We also stopped at the café there, where the cheese scones were enormous.

On the way home, we stopped at the large Tesco. Once back at the flat, we reheated the curry we had planned to eat the night before and spent a lazy evening watching the final episode of Tracker.