Newport; Monday, 30 June, 2014

If I done a little more planning I would have realised that going via Cowes and Southampton would have made for a significantly less potentially stressful journey up to Birmingham where I was heading to for a conference the following day.

Unfortunately I hadn’t and so I was booked on the midday train from Brockenhurst which meant I had to make some tight connections to ensure I didn’t end up missing the train and having to pay through the nose for a new ticket.

After checking out I decided that at this time of the morning it wasn’t worth risking that the bus from near the hotel to Newport would connect with the next bus, so I walked into the centre of town and the bus station, in time to pick up the number 7 towards Yarmouth.

Halfway between Newport and Carisbrooke, at the narrowest point on the road, naturally, a bus going in the opposite direction had broken down and so a good five minutes (or almost all) of my connection time was spent inching round that.

As if that wasn’t enough to give me palpitations shortly after Carisbrooke the bus had to abruptly stop and then reverse about 200m back down a road as it came head to head with a massive tractor occupying most of the carriageway.

Two more encounters with tractors meant that by the time I reached Yarmouth my 15 minutes to connect to the ferry was down to just 3 minutes.

I made it to the terminal building and onto the ferry, just, with moments to spare.

Thankfully, a 30 minute uneventful crossing later dropped me off in Lymington with enough time to catch the train back to Brockenhurst in time to make the connection there.