It was nice to see Ventura at sea as we headed towards Portsmouth. We’d most recently seen her on another steamship cruise down the Solent a month earlier, and she was a ship we were familiar with, having cruised on her to Belgium in 2017 and to the Canary Islands and Portugal in 2021.

As we neared Portsmouth we also had the pleasure of seeing the hovercraft head out in the opposite direction.

It was nice to see some people down on the Round Tower and around Gunwharf waving as we came back in past Old Portsmouth to the port.

And that concludes our trip aboard the world’s only ocean-going paddle steamship. It wasn’t quite the day we’d wanted but it was a nice day out nevertheless and we’re always happy when we’re on the water somewhere. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before Waverley has another season down here on the south coast, and when she does then we’ll try to get that circumnavigation of the Isle of Wight done again.

That was the plan, anyway.

We’d seen how many people were planning to board as we approached the island so made the sensible decision to get ourselves some lunch on board before the ship filled up. Our expectation was that we’d be eating as we set off again and then we could head outside to admire the views of the Isle of Wight from the deck alongside all the new passengers.

We finished our fish and chips, and the ship still hadn’t moved. We headed outside to find a lot of glum-looking faces. After a few more minutes there was an announcement. Waverley had developed a fault which they could fix but which would take too much time to complete the planned circumnavigation of the island. New boarding passengers were being issued refunds or the opportunity to sail again on a later sailing, and those of us with tickets from Portsmouth were being offered a partial refund equivalent to us having taken the cheaper Portsmouth to Yarmouth return trip instead. We thought it might be a bit churlish to accept that refund for a historic ship being run as well as she could be that had simply had an unforeseen issue so didn’t bother.

Meanwhile, Waverley was going to remain docked at Yarmouth and we were free to explore ashore for several hours if we wanted. And of course we did. However, we hadn’t been planning to do so originally so didn’t know what there would be to see.

As we disembarked Waverley we could see planes flying overhead spraying mind-control mist over the island. It’s the only way to keep the people there content with their lives. Luckily, we wouldn’t be ashore long enough to fall victim to its insidious ways. During our few hours in Yarmouth we would see plenty of other aircraft too, including an American B-52 bomber briefly, as there was an air show taking place in Bournemouth at that time.

To reach Yarmouth we had to walk down its pier. Yarmouth Pier originally dates to 1876, but being wooden and prone to woodworm it’s been restored and rebuilt many times since then.

We could see from the pier and from the maps on our phones that there was a castle very close by. In fact, from our maps it appeared to be the only thing to see in Yarmouth, but we had also spotted some pubs so knew we wouldn’t have too much trouble spending some time in the tiny town. To the castle first, then, and we passed a colourful mosaic mural on the way to it.

Yarmouth Castle is one of the Device Forts built under the orders of Henry VIII to protect the UK from potential attacks from Catholic countries encouraged to do so by the Pope, unhappy that Henry had broken from the church. Roughly square in shape and with an arrow-shaped bastion on its landward side – the first of these forts to be built that way – Yarmouth Castle was to protect the approach to the Solent from the west side of the Isle of Wight. It originally had a moat around it, but this has since been filled in and part of that land now forms what is now the adjoining George Hotel.

Yarmouth Castle is small but it’s definitely worth a look around. A lot of its interior layouts seem to reflect the earlier history of the fortifications, while on top it feels more as if you’re experiencing the Victorian occupation period. The castle was ready to be used in numerous conflicts right up until the Second World War although actual action was somewhat thin on the ground.

From the top of Yarmouth Castle there was a nice view down the pier and to Waverley docked at the end of it.

We decided to see if there was anything in Yarmouth that wasn’t appearing on the map. After a stroll up and down the streets, not really would be the answer there. We didn’t venture inside St James’ Church but if we had then we would have seen a statue of the seventeenth-century admiral Sir Robert Holmes. The face is his but the body is that of the French king Louis XIV. Holmes acquired the unfinished statue during a raid and forced the sculptor to complete it with his own likeness.

We had thought it would be fairly easy to get a drink as the town was small but there were a decent number of pubs. However, it was also very busy, partly because Waverley had arrived and all the people who should have been on her and sailing around the Isle of Wight were now in town. We eventually found space and some decent drinks in the Wheatsheaf.

There didn’t seem to be a lot of point in spending much more time in Yarmouth, so after a few photos from the small beach area on the eastern side of the pier we made our way back to the paddle steamer.

In the final part of this short series covering our day on Waverley I’ll show what we saw and got up to on the return trip across the Solent from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth. And by that I mean I’ll just be posting some photos of the cruise back over the Solent because we didn’t do anything at all.

In this first part of this short series covering our day’s experience aboard Waverley I’ll show photos of the trip out from Portsmouth to Yarmouth. If you’re the sort of person looking for facts about Waverley then you can find those out, along with its history, on the ship’s website. As always, this is more a travelogue and less a review.

An important thing to note right away is where to board Paddle Steamer Waverley in Portsmouth. Stupidly, because we’ve lived here all our lives, we thought we knew where the ferries came and left, and this turned out to be very, very wrong. It also doesn’t help that there are two Isle of Wight ferry departure points in Portsmouth depending on whether you want to go to Fishbourne or Ryde and the signs around the Gunwharf area and Portsmouth and Southsea train station where we were directed to find the ferry are ambiguous at best.

Great story, Mark. Now are you going to tell me where to find Waverley in Portsmouth?

Yes, I do apologise. Go into Portsmouth and Southsea train station and walk to the far end of the platform – the bit towards the water – and you’ll see signs in there. It’s effectively part of the train station, accessible from inside it, but not outside it (except by water, of course). If, like us, you see signs outside the station for the Isle of Wight ferry then don’t follow them to the Wightlink Ferry Terminal like we did or you’ll suddenly be speed-walking your way back when you realise how wrong you are. If you’re looking on Google Maps then find the ferry route that is marked Portsmouth to Ryde, and that’s where you need to be, even though you’re not going to Ryde at all. Hopefully, that’s all clear. Never say I’m not helpful.

So, eventually at the terminal, huge number of people waiting, but we were soon aboard and we weren’t long in leaving and a chance to see the familiar sights of the Portsmouth skyline from the water. The Spinnaker Tower, Gunwharf, HMS Warrior, the buildings along the front at Spice Island and Old Portsmouth, the Round Tower, and the Hot Walls.

We didn’t have quite the same weather or class of vessel or size of waving or just interested crowds when departing Portsmouth as we’d had when we’d cruised out of this stretch of the harbour a year earlier on Scarlet Lady, but it’s interesting to compare the photos here and from that post. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and I’ll make no apologies for local bias, but Portsmouth is one of the best cities in the world to sail in or out of if you like history and just general interest. More cruise companies should use Portsmouth as their start and end point, and hopefully they will now that the new cruise terminal is being built at the port; it would be absolutely fantastic to see a company like P&O Cruises, for instance, run a few itineraries from Portsmouth for their smaller vessels (Aurora and Arcadia).

Away from Portsmouth and onto the Solent, and we stayed outside long enough on the deck to enjoy the mild excitement of the pilot getting offloaded from Waverley back onto his boat. If you’ve never cruised and never seen a pilot boat coming alongside for the pilot to embark or disembark then it’s an interesting spectacle, and if you have cruised before and seen this before then it’s still interesting because everything’s interesting on the water. You can just tell that everyone peering over the side as the boat edged closer and closer to Waverley had seen this all before and they’d see it all again.

A bonus experience of our cruise aboard Paddle Steamer Waverley out of Portsmouth when we did it was that we got to pass close by the aircraft carrier, HMS Prince Of Wales. Completed after Britain had handed the national racists a gun to shoot itself in the foot, her subsequent disappointing service and broken-down condition symbolised all that is wrong with Brexit and is the reason why we lovingly referred to her as HMS Metaphor. First-time readers of this site might be thinking “Woah! There was no need for a political jibe there!” and regular readers will be thinking “Ah, good, I can now check off the Politics square on my Mark’s Travel Post bingo card.” My site, my rules.

We headed inside Waverley at this point. There’s only so long we can go without a drink at sea, after all. We stopped briefly for a look at the engine room as one of the benefits of boarding these small steamships is you’re granted far more access than you would on a modern cruise ship. However, with a day circling around the Isle of Wight to come (spoiler: we thought) we decided that we’d give it more of a nose later on, and made our way to one of the lounges to see what the bar had to offer. With Waverley being Scottish-based we had to see what the Caledonia Best was like, and it was impossible not to liken the lounge to a Scottish pub; the upholstery and bar were ridiculously similar to an inn we’d stayed at in Scotland years ago.

And that’s how we enjoyed the rest of this pleasant cruise across the Solent on Waverley towards the Isle of Wight: a drink in the lounge, then a wander outside to see the views, then back inside, and repeat.

I’ll finish this first part of our Paddle Steamer Waverley cruise experience as the ship pulled up at the pier at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. We were amazed by the queue of people waiting to get on the ship and hoped that enough already aboard were going to be spending the day ashore to not leave it feeling rammed.

In the next post in this series I’ll take us on our cruise around the Isle of Wight… unless something unexpected happens that causes that not to take place. Sadly for all those people on the pier at Yarmouth, that’s exactly what occurs.