Sandown; Sunday, 15 September, 2024

After dropping my luggage off with the hotel I headed down to the bus stop and picked up the Downs Breezer a couple of stops along the route to the former seafront fortress on the edge of town which has now been turned into the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary takes in animals that have been abused in places like travelling shows or circuses. The animals can never be returned to the wild due to the way they’ve been treated, but the sanctuary creates a pleasant home for them to live their lives out in. At the time of visiting the sanctuary was home to at least four tigers and four lions and was in the process of preparing space for the arrival of two bears.

Along with the rescued animals the sanctuary is also home to a number of other animals including Wallabies, Lemurs, Meerkats and small monkeys. I spent quite a bit of time looking round the site, so decided to stop off in the café for lunch.

In keeping with the sanctuary’s aims the café aims to use plant-based ingredients in all of their food which is how I discovered that vegan mozzarella really doesn’t work on pizzas – it wasn’t the most pleasant lunch I’d ever had.

From the sanctuary I had a long walk back along the Esplanade, skipping past Dinosaur Island which was closed on a Sunday, through town and past the National Poo Museum – closed due to technical problems, and also not open on a Sunday even if it wasn’t closed otherwise. I continued walking all the way along the seafront into the next-door town of Shanklin and had a bit of a wander along their esplanade before a check of the time made me realise I needed to start heading back, so I caught the bus from the esplanade back up to the bus station and then a bus back into Sandown.

I quickly headed down to the hotel to pick up my bags and then hopped on the next bus over into Ryde, giving me 30 minutes to spare to check-in for my hovercraft flight back to Southsea. I was very glad I was early as the service ended up being full and some passengers had to wait back for a later flight.

Back over in Portsmouth I caught the hover bus round to Portsmouth Harbour station to start the more difficult leg of the journey back home.

I already knew there were rail replacement buses this weekend between Portsmouth and Havant, but I’d assumed there would be signage and people directing passengers – clearly things South Western Railway though were optional, so it was only by following an incoming rail replacement bus that I found out where they were leaving from. Lucky then that I had nearly 30 minutes to make the connection here.

At the Havant end things were a little more organised and as the train was starting here, I was able to bag a comfortable seat for the long journey back into London. Not only were the trains disrupted at the Portsmouth end, but there were also works on the mainline into London which meant that after Woking rather than heading straight to Clapham we instead turned off the main line and meandered round Surrey taking in towns such as Chertsey, Egham and Ashford before finally passing through Feltham. At least from here it would be a direct run through Twickenham and Richmond to Clapham, except SWR decided we hadn’t meandered enough and instead sent us off on a journey through Hounslow, Brentford and Chiswick before finally making our way into Clapham, on time but nearly three times longer than the journey would normally take.

At least my train from Clapham back home was on time, direct and had free seats.