Parents are in Town
Four Nil to the Arsenal
A Ticket to Ryde
Paul was staying in Southampton, and although ferries to the Isle of Wight do leave from Southampton we decided to meet up in Portsmouth for a few reasons - the ferry from Southampton goes to Cowes, but we were more interested in going to Ryde which is where all the ferries from Portsmouth went; and we wanted to catch the Hovercraft to Ryde, not the ferry. Yes, that's right, a hovercraft! Jeremy and Rachel pointed out to me the ferry would be cheaper than the hovercraft, which I have no doubt is true but part of the appeal was the hovercraft. It wasn't the first hovercraft I'd ever ridden in - when I was at high school, some students built a 2-seater hovercraft as part of the class they were doing and I'd managed to score a ride in it hooning around the school field. But this hovercraft was much larger, seating about 100 people and would travel over water. It's by no means the biggest hovercraft ever built, not even for civilian means - that honour goes to the hovercrafts that used to carry passengers and vehicles between Dover and Calais, but they finished up in 2000 (too costly to run, and feeling the pinch from the Channel Tunnel and rising fuel costs) and were replaced by fast ferries not unlike the old Lynx. Having said that, the Portsmouth-Ryde hovercraft service is the worlds oldest, and biggest remaining hovercraft operation in the world I am told. We bought our tickets for the 11am "flight" and a return about 7.15pm (although they said you could go on any, so long as they still had spare seats), watched the hovercraft arrive up out of the water and up onto a concrete pad; boarded the craft, sat down and a pre-recorded announcement came over announcing the safety information - much like an aeroplane flight. Apparently hovercraft are considered a type of aeroplane rather than a boat, and they are driven by a pilot rather than a captain. The hovercraft lifted up, turned and slid sideways towards the sea and then the next thing you knew we were on the sea heading for the Isle of Wight - there was no change in sensation when it changed from hovering over land to water, the whole thing felt seamless.