Fancy Seeing You Here!

Through a succession of random decisions, Hope and I found ourselves spending Good Friday on the Isle of Wight. A place I have never visited before.

We arrived with no plan and decided to get on buses and see where they took us.

The first one took us to Shanklin in the sunshine. It was lovely and we walked through the Chine to the beach.
The second bus was destined for Newport - but we broke down in a little hamlet called Merstone. It didn't matter as we had nowhere to be and no one to meet - so we enjoyed Merstone.

Eventually we were rescued by another bus and continued onto Newport, where we found somewhere in the sunshine to have some wine and people-watch.

Then across the square came Arthur - a dear friend from university I have not seen for 7 years and who lives in Spain! How amazing is that! I thought it was very spooky - but apparently it's something to do with the space-time continuum!

The following 2 hours were a surreal mixture of catching up, seeing more of the island and eating Minghella icecreams before getting the ferry back to Portsmouth.

Who would have thought that the Isle of Wight would be a parallel universe?