While the in-laws had needed to use the car ferry to get from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight (on account of them taking their car, you see) we had no such limitation with the mode of transportation available and, because we’re children at heart and because it’s the best way to get there, we took the hovercraft. And why wouldn’t you? If you’re just visiting the Isle of Wight for a short trip (which is all you’ll ever need) then pick the way to get there that involves rapidly spinning propellers deafening you and a massive curtain of air bouncing you across the Solent. It’s better than I’m making it sound.

At Ryde we were met by the relations and set off to see some Wight sights. As we were all fans of seeing historical sites – we all still are – we headed first for Osborne House, former summer home for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Built in the mid-nineteenth century in the Italian Renaissance style with design input from Prince Albert, the location was chosen as the views from this part of the Isle of Wight across the Solent reminded Albert of the Bay of Naples. Having been to Naples on a couple of occasions now I can attest to the fact that drugs were obviously readily available to the royals of Victoria-era Britain.

As it was cloudy when we first arrived we visited the house to start with. Victoria liked Osborne a lot, spending time at the house several times a year both before and after Albert died. Victoria died in Osborne House in 1901 after which her son, King Edward VII, who’d never liked the building, gifted it to the state. At the time of our visit we weren’t permitted to take photographs inside Osborne (this policy has now changed) but if we had then you might have sympathised with Edward. Gaudy doesn’t even come close to the impression we had. Taste is a very subjective thing, but wow!

By the time we’d emerged from Osborne’s eye-aching interior the day had brightened up considerably and we were presented with some lovely views. Still not very Neapolitan, though.

During our time at Osborne we also took a horse-and-cart ride to see the Swiss Cottage. This building had been deconstructed, transported from Switzerland, and rebuilt in the grounds specifically for the royal children to play in. In addition, the children were given plots of land in which to grow produce and sell them to their father as a means to teach economics. I can’t imagine why Edward didn’t like the place.

From Osborne House on the north coast of the Isle of Wight we then drove across to the west side of the island to see the landmark that is The Needles. These are chalk stacks, in some ways reminiscent of the basalt stacks off southern Iceland, although, since these are English natural formations and not Icelandic ones there is no myth about them being trolls turned into stone. The name of the three stacks derives from a fourth stack that has since collapsed into the sea and which was somewhat needle-shaped; something that can’t be said for those that remain. The Jaggedy Toothy Things doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as The Needles, though.

While you could just simply admire the views from the cliffs and down to Alum Bay (where you can pick up coloured sand souvenirs) there are some activities that can be undertaken at The Needles and on this visit to the Isle of Wight we did just that. Firstly, there was a chairlift for those who didn’t want to hurl themselves off the cliff edge and trust to the softness of the sand below (other routes down may have been available). We’re fond of a chairlift, and even if the one on the Isle of Wight doesn’t quite have the altitude and distance to travel as that we rode on up the Osorno Volcano in Chile, there’s still something magical about flying out over the top of a cliff with a view to the sea, and it’s a recommended experience.

Even though this day trip to the Isle of Wight took place almost a decade before we got married and enjoyed our first cruise you can tell the love of being on the water was there from early on in our relationship (well, we are both Portsmouth people, after all) as the next thing we did was hop on a boat to get out closer to The Needles. This also brought us some lovely close-up views of the Needles Lighthouse and we do like a nice lighthouse. The one off the west coast of the island dates from the nineteenth century although some form of navigational warning beacon had been present in the area almost a century earlier. Fully automated now, it was also fully automated back then too, although it had been one of the last three lighthouses in the country to be manned, said men (or women) having last served in the structure in 1994.

There isn’t a huge amount to see and do on the Isle of Wight but we have neglected it as a place to explore and we really must make the effort to get over there again and do so. I’ll add it to the list.

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.