Isle of Man
Just a Little Extra Time
I’ve already written a good deal about the Isle of Man but as so many people seem to have enjoyed hearing about the place, and I love it, I thought I’d add a bonus post in. I am very much of the impression that Norman Wisdom was onto something. I could imagine living on the Isle of Man as he did.
Sometimes, even though I didn’t get to live there, I did end up staying on the island longer than I expected. One thing about island life is that you can’t just get up and leave, you kind of need help. Every time I visited, I flew in from London City and back out again by the same route. Well, I did until the day that my return flight was cancelled due to an unserviceable aeroplane. Now, I have no wish for them to fly me in an unserviceable aeroplane but I had kind of planned on getting home. Sometimes in life, though, you have to accept that you have no control over a situation and let things take their course. In fact, the more days on which you can do that, the happier you’ll be. The course my day now took was directly back towards the Best Western Palace and Casino which is where the airline put me up for the night until they could fly me home the following day.
I made my way to the hotel in a shared taxi with two Polish gentleman from the same cancelled flight. They had visited the island to install a new pyramid-shaped teabag making machine. By that I don’t mean a teabag making machine shaped like a pyramid but a machine to make the island’s very first pyramid-shaped teabags. At least, I think I do. The Isle of Man had, until this point, been entirely devoid of pyramid-shaped teabags and the Tynwald’s Directorate of Comestibles and Beverages, or some such department, had decided that the islanders should be deprived of that experience no longer. Perhaps they were losing people to the mainland UK, people were willing to give up a gentle pace of life and a propitious tax regime for the lure of the mainland’s pyramid-shaped teabags.
My new Polish friends had also been teaching the staff how to use the machine as, apparently, making pyramid-shaped teabags is not like making teabag-shaped teabags. I think that I may have glazed over and not taken in any more teabag-related information at this point. They asked me if I knew what the Best Western Palace Hotel and Casino was like as they’d not previously stayed there. I told them that the staff were always friendly and helpful, the rooms were clean with great views and the food plentiful and tasty.
I now had some real free time on the island, not just a couple of hours snatched after work. I could take the electric railway and explore just a bit more. There are worse things in the world than to be stuck on an island you love on a blue-sky July day.
The scenery reminded me of my walk from Stonehaven to Dunnottar Castle: fields, sheep, the old tumbledown stone wall, cliffs, jutting headlands, and a blue, blue sea. As you pass, people in back gardens, who have clearly seen the electric railway pass by before, and, given the timetable, probably only an hour ago, still smile and wave as you trundle by, as though it’s all very novel to them, too. The station names are marvellous, I pass through Groudle Glen, Baldrine, South Cape and Laxey before getting off at Dhoon Glen. If I’d stayed on, I’d have been treated to Ballaglass, Ballajora and Lewaigue; which I wouldn’t even try to pronounce so couldn’t buy a ticket for.
On the Manx Electric Railway I got talking to a Slovenian gentleman who lives in Trieste. No, that’s not true, he got talking, I got listening. He told me that he always travelled alone, I didn’t ask why, I didn’t need to. He seemed to remember the temperature on any given date at any given time at any place he’d ever been. This was impressive, in a way. He then proceeded to tell me some of his favourite temperatures, which was not.
It was hot today in Dhoon Glen, the station here consisted of what was essentially a garden shed with one side open and a café with all sides closed. A boardwalk took me and my new Slovenian friend deep between the trees as we descended into a steep-sided valley. It was quite cool under the shade of the tree canopy, walking next to the trickling stream. As we passed the ruins of a stone-built, tall, square chimney and walls that once housed a waterwheel used in nineteenth century mining operations here, Stanislav the Human Thermometer told me that the hottest night in Trieste that he could remember was at 2am on 27th June when it was thirty-two degrees Celsius.
Halfway down to the beach which lies at the end of this valley is a waterfall which drops forty metres, it is called, I think, Inneen Mooar which, if I’ve got it right, translates from the Manx as Big Girl. As the path down grew steeper, Stanislav told me that he even remembered a night in April when the temperature in Trieste did not fall below twenty-eight degrees. He stomped on down the path. I told him that we’d have to part company as it was too much for me to climb back up here with him. That was entirely true, even if I didn’t say whether it was the climb or the company that was too much for me. He waved goodbye and strode off down the path. It was five-twenty pm and the temperature in Dhoon Glen was twenty-four degrees.
I made my way back to the train and to Douglas where I ate fish and chips which taste better at the seaside than anywhere else and even better when British Airways pay for them. I looked out from my balcony on the now dark promenade as it curved away from me towards the ferry terminal. All the lights in the hotels and restaurants along the seafront left long shimmering, sparkling, wavering trails in the water. The light on the lighthouse revolved, occasionally a car passed, the waves lapped gently on the beach. I couldn’t really grumble about being stuck, could I?
The next morning I was up early and saw the sun rise over Howstrake Hill before I got a taxi back to the airport. I waved to the fairies and said good morning as we passed, as did my taxi driver, whose name was Attila. Honestly it was, Attila the Taxi Driver. The airline had fixed their aircraft and I flew out to London City. We climbed out past Castletown and the lighthouse that was once Jeremy Clarkson’s holiday home. Can you imagine that? Buying a lighthouse as a holiday home? A bit flashy. Now the island opened out, its hills and single mountain, its coastline and the small separate islands: the Calf of Man and the tiny Chicken Rock with its lonely lighthouse. Back across to what the Tynwald refer to in parliamentary business as “the adjacent island”.