Ryde; Friday, 10 August, 2018

I had a late checkout arranged with the hotel that meant I could work out of it up until 5pm if needed, but I intended on using my lunch break to make the short hop across the Solent to the island.

That plan had appeared fine right up until just before 11am when the weather started to deteriorate rapidly with heavy downpours, but more importantly strong winds.

I decided to delay lunch until a bit later in the hop that the weather would improve, but checking the Hovertravel website it became obvious that I wasn’t going to be getting over to the Island in the way I had been intending, and eventually, just before 2pm I took a late lunch and picked up replacement through tickets to route myself via Portsmouth Harbour, the catamaran and the island line train to the centre of Ryde. It took 20 minutes longer than the original plan and used up most of my lunch break, but I did just have time to grab some lunch before checking in to the hotel in Ryde and heading up to my room to finish off work for the day.

Work over again, I headed out for a wander along the prom. I’d held off for a little while as there had been a pretty sharp shower just after 5pm, but by 6pm it was sunny and I thought it would be safe to head out.

20 minutes later I was running for the shelter of a closed ice cream kiosk to avoid a soaking as a heavy shower came over. I waited out the rain in the dry of the kiosk before continuing on along the seafront to the start of the boating lake, making it to a shelter a few seconds before the next shower started.

Whilst I was in the shelter the closing events of Cowes week were taking place out at sea with three P&O cruise liners lining up by Ryde Pier and then having a flypast from the Red Arrows, who timed it perfectly with the skies clearing to reveal a pleasant evening.

I continued walking along the coast down to the Appley Tower and a look round there before heading back into the centre of town for dinner and then to bed.