Ryde

We have stayed in the same cottage in Brading for nine or ten years now, a good spell which is now coming to an end, with our landlady being slightly older than ourselves and wanting to down-size. Current thinking is that we look at what we at what we can do in both Brading and Ryde. This last possibly involving travel by train rather than road. 

So we thought we would take a look at the part of old Ryde just above the esplanade, to the east of Union Street, with there being at least one holiday let in Bellevue Road, so the idea was to head in that general direction.

Stopped at Tesco's on the way to put some petrol in our hire car. We only needed to ask for help the once - the trouble not being with the petrol cap of the hire car - which I managed - but with the Tesco's petrol pump which I did not. Luckily the chap on the other side of the pump could.

Despite being some way above the beach, there were signs of flood prevention, possibly triggered by water works problems a year or so previously. Presumably, when you heard or saw the water rushing down the street, you nipped out with your board and slotted it in. I remember, years ago now, seeing such things at Yarmouth, on the other side of the country.

Bellevue Road turned out to be a rather mixed road, rather fun in fact, a bit Hampsteady, and also ran to the first blackberries of the season.

Not bad at all.

Closely followed by this impressive bit of front gardening - of which I was rather jealous. Google Images turns up a version of this very image - from Facebook - and the information that what we have is an Agave americana, otherwise the century plant, so named because it only flowers the once, after between ten and thirty years of life. So we were lucky to catch it.

One of these two was the holiday cottage we had dug up previously. No parking and no view, but a good bit bigger than our Brading cottage, a good part of town and not far from the station. Just the one stop from the pier head station and the ferries to Portsmouth. Definitely a possibility.

A bit of brownfield, just a few yards off the road proper.

Then, in the adjacent Nelson Street, we came across what had been a Wesleyan Chapel, now looking for a new tenant, a new occupation. As luck would have it, the place was open and the lady there, clearly the senior trusty, knew all about it. The place where we scored piano No.108 at reference 5.

Even chopped in half, what was now the upstairs was a handsome space - on which it looked as if someone had spent a good bit of money.

There was also a handsome ceiling rose. Surprising how competitive these low church types can get about their buildings - and the amount of money they had to play with. I associated to a very grand low church, with very flashy brown wood top-to-toe as I recall, near the Lady Lever gallery in Birkenhead.

Memory not quite right, but the church certainly exists, and it is fairly flashy, with the snap above capturing my recollection of the ambience pretty well. Paid for, as it happens, with the profits from Sunlight Soap. See references 6 and 7.

Downstairs in the Nelson Street chapel there was some very heavy duty steel and some very heavy duty timber holding up the ceiling, suggesting that at one time something pretty heavy had been upstairs - not that we saw any sign of anything of sort. However, there is some history at reference 8, and the explanation is that the place has done serious time as a warehouse. The pictures there however, do not do justice to the steel and timber that I saw. I should have taken my own.

Out to find Vectis Hall of Melville Street, behind hoarding and under scaffolding. First noticed back in 2019, at reference 9. So two interesting old buildings in the same part of Ryde looking for something new to do.

Snacked in a place called 'Higher Grounds' in Cross Street, run by a young man who had only recently upped his game from a coffee van. But he sounded like he knew a great deal about coffee - and his coffee and toasted banana cake were very good - with the banana cake being a lot better than most of the tea cakes had been offered. Apparently, he baked a fresh supply of banana cake each morning. With walnuts.

A bit later, having mooched around Ryde shops a bit, lunched at the Hong Kong Express, down on the esplanade, as previously noticed. Followed by our penultimate walk on Ryde beach. The snap above looking towards Puckpool, with Appley Tower just about visible upper right.

Along the way, a curious trolley in an arcade. A bit like the coffin trolleys one sometimes comes across in rural churches, but Google Images, which turns up a lot of trolleys like this one, some very like, suggests some kind of market trolley. But the wheels, if original, would not take a lot of weight, so it would have to be something fairly light.

Oddly, in among all the near car boot sale merchandise there, there was a heap of free 'Style' magazines, a glossy and expensive affair. advertising the other end of the holiday market place: big houses, fancy clothes, fancy goods and fancy food - and to be found online at reference 12. Not much of it for us, but we have used the Seaview Hotel (above right) in the past, finding it rather expensive, rather full of itself and rather too full of people who bray. Not really for us either.

And we managed a very modest bit of shopping at the big Tesco's, with self-checkout and without needing any help from the attendant at all. A holiday first!

PS 1: the hebe at the top of this post, outside our cottage, in full flower, was sometimes full of bees and other, unidentified, flying objects, sometimes not. The snap at the top of the post can from the evening before the day noticed above, when it was not, although I can pick out the odd bee under zoom. Google Images suggests Veronica stricta, a native of New Zealand, for which Wikipedia offers the short entry at reference 1.

PS 2: there was some discussion at reference 2 about whether the Cupra logo was a cow or a fox, with me opting for cow, BH for fox (or wolf). So we were interested to come across this van, with a very similar logo, very definitely a fox.

Plus semi-custom registration plate. A Ford Transit 350 L3 H3 P/V DRW. While WHS World offer a '2.0 350 L3 DCB DCC DRW 129 BHP' for around £13,000 excluding VAT, which might or might not be a close relative. WHS being a world of luxury and commercial vehicles.

And I now know from reference 3 that they are into fashion clothes for wearing with your car. I had got the idea that they were a car valeting outfit - but that was after lunch.

PS: the serious Ryde water works have now been run down to reference 10, from back in 2021. I felt sure that they would be somewhere. A post which also tells of the excellent bacon and egg baps at the Puckpool café - corroboration of a sort of my moaning about same towards the end of reference 11.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_stricta.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-new-car-series-1-episode-2.html.

Reference 3: https://www.prestigious-fox.co.uk/. 'A new stylish brand that has been launched to channel positivity and creativity. A fresh twist on the automotive clothing scene'.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agave_americana.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/piano-108.html.

Reference 6: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2007/04/bus-stops.html. From the days before telephones came with decent cameras.

Reference 7: https://www.martintop.org.uk/blog/port-sunlight-its-church.

Reference 8: http://depozitory.co.uk/.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/wight-three.html.

Reference 10: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/ryde.html.

Reference 11: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/insular-eating.html.

Reference 12: https://www.styleofwight.co.uk/. The source of the snap above.