Weekend breaks

Near and far (but not very far)

Family Appleyard (and Rice, mustn’t forget son in law!) has got into the habit of having a long weekend away at least once a year. I think we started doing it regularly after Covid, and since then we’ve been to all sorts of places. Last year, we went to Antwerp, and before that, we’ve done places like Lee-over-Sands, Whitby and Whitstable. In each case, we’ve rented a house (or flat) through a well-known website I won’t mention here, because I don’t think they need the free publicity, and the experience has always been a positive one.

The view from an Antwerp flat

Being in a flat in the middle of Antwerp, above a very popular pizza place in a pedestrian street is a completely different experience from being stabled in what was effectively a shed near an Essex beach, or an old house in Whitby, but once we’re there (wherever there is), it doesn’t really matter, since we all seem to enjoy the same things.

An owl outside the kitchen window in Lee-over-Sands. The entire weekend was worth it just for that, since it was definitely the first (and probably only) time I’ve seen an owl while cooking!

That’s got to be chalked up as a success in the parenting logbook really. We’ve got a wonderful photo, which I won’t share here, of teenager daughter sulking because she didn’t want to walk a single yard more, and so she just sat down by the side of the road, where we left her (I promise that she followed us eventually, she isn’t still there 15 or so years later). Nowadays, that same daughter takes herself out for long walks across the Surrey Hills just for fun.

When planning our trips, our starting point is to try and ensure that most of our journeys to the various places take more or less the same time. We don’t always quite manage that, so I’ll expand it by saying that I’m obviously using ‘more or less’ in its loosest sense here, since clearly Whitstable and Antwerp don’t take the same time to get to, but our intention in each case is for it to be a journey that isn’t too far, and isn’t too tiring. Distance certainly isn’t always the easiest way to determine time – our trip to the place in Essex was complicated by the fact that it involves a lot of M25, London’s orbital car park motorway, which was closed at various points on our journey back, meaning that somewhere which is, in a straight line, a mere 80 miles away (it’s further by road, because there’s the small matter of a large city directly in the way) took us about 5 hours on our return journey, which ended up being about the same as the drive back from Antwerp last year.

This year’s destination, as spotted at sunset from a ferry heading to Spain a couple of years ago.

This year, we decided to add another place beginning with W to our collection. Watch out Weymouth, you could well be next unless we decide that a trip to Weybridge, just round the corner from here, is on the cards – we could go and visit a colleague for a cuppa if we did that! We also decided we would make the journey as easy as possible, and so we chose to go to the Isle of Wight, a destination which meant catching the ferry from Southampton (a mere 50 miles from home, if only we hadn’t gone via daughter’s place to pick them up on the way, which added about 20 miles more). The entire journey, from home back to home covered 280 miles - 140 miles to Southampton and back, and another 140 trundling around the island itself, and the thing that really struck me was just how efficient fuel (well, electricity in my hybrid car) consumption was. At an average speed on the island which was comfortably below 30mph, it’s fair to say that our MPG (or indeed miles per KwH) figures were outstanding. There was quite a bit of traffic around because we’d managed to book the same weekend as an event called the Isle of Wight Takeover, which seemed to involve almost every souped-up car in southern England converging on a field, or driving around in convoys of what, in most cases, were very shiny Ford Focuses of one kind and another.

The burble of highly-tuned Ford (and other) exhausts was the soundtrack to much of our weekend

I should have known when we boarded the ferry really, since most of the cars on it looked like they had been modified in some way.

Anyway, the crossing from Southampton is always fascinating. There’s so much to see, from massive cruise liners to cargo boats to little things bobbing about on the water. Squinting eastwards, if you’re lucky, you’ll see the hovercraft on the horizon, speeding from Southsea to Ryde, and many, many yachts. One thing that caught my eye this time was a boat carrying wind turbine blades. When you look at the turbines out at sea, they look very small, but when you see them right next to you, they’re enormous.

Once we’d arrived on the island and had lunch (some things are important), we went off to our first destination, which was somewhere called Quarr Abbey. Honestly, we were completely enchanted by the place which, amongst other things, sold its own beer. As we walked through the woods, we spotted a red squirrel. Then another one. Then another one. At one point we saw four of them together. Honestly, that was going to be very hard to beat, and if we’d turned around and headed straight back to the ferry, I think we would all already have been able to agree that it had been a good weekend.

Much like the owl in Lee-over-Sands, seeing red squirrels on the Isle of Wight was very exciting.

However, we didn’t do that. We stuck to our original plan and visited plenty of other places too, always in the company of at least one shiny Ford Focus RS.

Taking this one of Carisbrooke Castle involved crouching down over a puddle, which rather confused the person from English Heritage watching me as I did so.

I also finally managed to visit Appuldurcombe House, somewhere that’s so photogenic I could have illustrated this post just with photos taken there. I’ve tried to visit it before, but for some reason (I have no idea what), it’s closed on Saturdays, which I’m sure catches quite a few people out.

Appuldurcombe House – a ruin certainly, but an extremely attractive one.

We had lovely walks along the coast and through woods, we visited Osborne House, which has nothing to do with Ozzy, apparently, where we got absolutely drenched while walking back up from the sea, and, not that far from Yarmouth, we saw an abandoned Croc on a seawall, poor thing.

And, of course, I kept my eyes peeled for ghost signs, as I always do. There are plenty of them around, but I’ll limit myself to sharing just one here.

SELF - PASTRYCOOK – THE NOTED PIE SHOP – SELF. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Thank you for reading yet another of my posts that has gone off in a different direction from the one I thought it would take. Oh well, at least I’m consistent.

If, quite understandably, the thought of subscribing is too much to contemplate, but you’ve enjoyed reading something I’ve written, then you also have the option to simply buy me a ferry crossing (contributions may in fact be used to buy something at the garlic farm shop on the Isle of Wight, but I won’t tell if you don’t ask). If I get enough, I might even be able to write a post illustrated solely with things I’ve photographed from boats, although actually I’ve already got plenty, so maybe don’t bother and I’ll write one anyway (one day).