Sandown

On the Sunday after our arrival on the island, the weather was good enough for a walk along the Yaverland-Sandown stretch of coast.

So down to the car park by the town cemetery to collect our car. A car park which by its location one might have thought was owned by the town council - Brading being a very ancient and once important town - but which is actually in private hands, with the day-to-day management of the car park subbed out to a car park contractor, as is often the way these days. A car park with at least one permanent & unmoving resident in the form of this red Jaguar, in reasonable condition apart from a flat tyre. Perhaps the current owner cannot afford a new tyre - although a quick peek at Bing's shopping tab suggests less than £100. One might think not that much at all compared with the price of such a car, even second hand.

Drove the short distance to Yaverland to find that, using the paybyphone website previously noticed, reference 1, I could only buy parking for two or more days. What was going on? I settled for two days, which committed us to Yaverland for two days, irritating but not really a problem. An irritation which BH solved a few days later.

Now the southern end of the Sandown port has been marked by a distinctive block of flats, as snapped above, looking south.

So a developer, presumably with the agreement of the council, has decided to mark the northern end with a similar but not identical block. Which, although on the move again now, had seemingly been paused, rather in the way of a lot of the building projects in Epsom, at the half way point. Possibly tiresome if one has already bought into the first half of the building.

I rather liked the bracketing of the town with two blocks in this way, a bracketing which might encourage activity in-between.

Not many people on the beach at this point. But plenty of derelict hotels landside - some of which looked as it their roofs had been sufficiently damaged so as to make repair and refurbishment improbable. Without bringing any alternative proposal to the boil. But, maybe, with southern Europe getting rather too hot for comfort, the island will come back into fashion and the money to build new hotels will come back too.

Strolled onto a café somewhere near the pier where we took tea and toasted tea-cake. In the margins of which we had occasion to ponder, prompted by the closure of the central council facility, on life in a wheel chair in places where the provision of disabled toilets was poor. Not much fun at all - and it would be easy enough, having been caught out a few times, just to give up on outings.

From there onto Fins Beach café, a place which had clearly moved on from the traditional seaside fare of eggs, chips, two slices and sticky buns. I took hummus on toast, a bit complicated but fine. While BH took a prawn sandwich involving both goo and avocado - which was fine for her although it would not have been fine for me. As it happened, just right for the occasion which called for a light lunch rather than a heavy lunch.

Back through the rather run-down High Street to pick up some olive bread from the small Sainsbury's there. A sort of bread which I don't think you can get from our much bigger Sainsbury's in Epsom. Perhaps a little undercooked, but pretty good just the same - and handy for an impromptu picnic as it can be eaten without butter or anything else.

On the outskirts, a once quite grand hotel, complete with its own putting green, perhaps called Brown's Hotel. A place which has never been open in the ten years or so that we have known it and where it now looks as if a refurbishment project has stalled.

The old battery, now some sort of wildlife place, can be seen behind and to the right. A wildlife place which has damped down its enthusiastic promotion of its tigers - despite their being rescue tigers and so not snatched from the wild, at least not directly. I think some of them were once celebrity pets, dumped after the celebrities in question tired of them.

The view from a handy shelter, a bit like a bus shelter but facing the sea. The left hand wall of the shelter visible left in the snap above. And despite appearances here, a lot more people on the beach then than there had been on the outward leg.

A bit further on there is a small collection of beach bungalows - Fort Spinney Beach Bungalows - where we once went so far as to inquire about the price. But the residents may have mixed feelings about the much larger apartments, or possibly houses, which are now rather blocking their views. Old build left, new build right in the snap above. Or perhaps the old residents were paid off and so are not in a very good position to complain.

We passed on rock cakes from the Yaverland beach café on this occasion, good though they are. Two snacks was quite enough considering the very modest amount of exercise that we had taken.

Having paid for two days, Yaverland again on the day following. A red cliff day, as already noticed at reference 2.

After which back to Brading to finish off the remains of the holiday's bit of gammon from Epsom, supplemented by a bit of saucisson sec out of Tesco's, by Bastides. Taken with potato salad and green salad.

Followed by an episode or so of BBC's take on 'The Forsyte Saga', it and the Joan Hickson version of Miss. Marple being our holiday viewing - it having turned out that I had put some of our DVDs in a box in the roof, rather than recycling them. A welcome break from our usual diet of streamed police & crime dramas - dramas which are getting a bit too torrid and gritty for our elderly tastes.

While the two inch vertical distance between the left and right hand portions of the snap above was too much for the focussing machinery of my telephone, with the left hand potion only being just about legible when you zoom in on it. Could I do better by fiddling with the settings? Could Samsung do better at tidying the snap up after the event?

From where I associate to Joan Hickson's having had a walk-on part as a maid in one of the much earlier Joan Rutherford versions of Miss. Marple. Much earlier enough that it featured real ponies and traps, rather than heritage ones.

PS: some pipework on our ferry across. The sewage discharge appears to have been closed off - but I don't understand the tall pipe next to it, which seems to contain an active and relatively new tap despite being closed off at the top. Perhaps the cap at the top can be removed more easily than it might appear to a landlubber.

References

Reference 1: https://www.paybyphone.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-crane-report.html.