Ryde; Sunday, 12 August, 2018

I woke up to heavy rain and a check of the weather forecast revealed it wasn’t likely to get much better for most of the day, so I needed to find something dry to do for the day. I had intended on visiting the town museum, but that turned out to be closed on a Sunday, so after finishing breakfast and checking out of the hotel I headed over to the bus station to pick up the Island Coaster

The Coaster is a bus service that runs three times a day from Ryde down the East and then South coasts of the island to Yarmouth. Along the way it travels through many of the major seaside towns as well as across some of the prettier parts of the islands scenery, though quite a bit of it was obscured by the hammering rain.

The journey took around 3 hours to complete and by the time we arrived in Yarmouth the rain had subsided into the occasional spot of drizzle, so I took a chance and joined the open-top bus tour up out to the Needles.

As we came back down from the Needles into Alum bay the weather started to deteriorate again, and rather than getting a soaking on an open-top bus I changed at the bay onto one of the normal buses and caught that back through the centre of the island to Newport.

I stopped in Newport for a late lunch before heading back over to the bus station and picking up the bus back round to Ryde.

Thankfully, despite the rain, the wind was calm, so I headed back to the hotel, picked up my luggage and walked over to the hover terminal to pick up the hovercraft back across to Southsea and then start the long journey back home by train along the coast.