On the middle Saturday of our holiday a great deal of wind was forecast, so much so that various weekend events were cancelled, including the Pride March planned for Ryde - presumably leaving a lot of people in fancy dress at something of a loose end.
We opted for a visit Bembridge and started off well at the car park. Started off well in that BH actually read the paybyphone instructions and discovered that their car parks carried two location codes. One was for regular use, quite possibly just for an hour or so, while the other was for people who were driving around the island for a few days and didn't want to have to bother with checking into every car park they wanted to use. A sort of season ticket. This was the code which caught me at Yaverland. Whereas now we knew to use the other code which allowed booking by the hour.
There was wind, but Bembridge beach faced downwind and so it was pleasantly warm on the beach, in the shelter of the bank - cliff would be rather a big word - behind. Started off with the paused building snapped above, once rather a good café (yellow spot above), run by the Best Dressed Crab people noticed at reference 1. They left to make way for giving the building a makeover, perhaps to make it into a luxury beachside residence in a sought after area, a makeover which seems to have been paused for some time now. The café continues to operate a reduced service from a caravan pitched on the open ground beyond the car park (lilac spot above).
Fairly high tide, so the ledges were mostly under water. Some desultory fishing by seagulls. Some cormorants.
Various aeroplanes, high up, heading roughly northwest. We could not think where they might have been headed.
What looked like rain over various points on the mainland.
No sailing boats that we could see, perhaps seen off by the weather forecast, but there was a large red-hulled boat with some kind of contraption rigged over the stern which looked rather like some kind of crane. Some superstructure in the middle, but in the absence of the monocular, just a blur. No idea what it might have been. Google not much good on this occasion, but Bing turns up the ship above: perhaps the right idea, but rather too grand to be what I saw.
On the other hand, Google, for some reason best known to itself, did offer from reference 3 a neat map of the geology of the island and its environs.
Picnic on the beach done, we dozed a bit in the sun and then, after a while, back to our cottage to continue our siestas indoors. Then, early evening, off to the Bugle, previously noticed at reference 2. In my case for a black pudding topped beef burger. A first, but goo-lite and rather good. BH took her customary salad, beefed up with some garlic bread. Same wine as last time, although they had not got much better with corks. Even more crowded: the new senior management team seems to have hit on the right mix.
On the way there, we had been entertained by a fair sized flock of crows flapping about overhead, maybe a hundred of them. On the way home, we had the first sighting of the moon for a while. Checking with reference 4 this afternoon, I learn that it must have been a very old moon, sinking a bit north of west at the time. Barely visible. Perhaps I am not reading the reference right.
On return, I gathered up the screws which had been sitting on our front garden wall for more than 24 hours and so were recoverable. Now in the rather heavy screw box in the garage.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/best-dressed-crab.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/07/to-ryde.html.
Reference 3: https://wessexcoastgeology.soton.ac.uk/Solent-Introduction.htm.
Reference 4: https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/@2654990?month=7&year=2023.
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