Riding the Hovercraft to see the Osbornes

Well it only took me nine months but I finally visited one of the closest sites to my apartment in Portsmouth. Though I guess I should say we got there. In fact I can practically see it from my apartment window on clear days. A few weeks ago on a unbelievable fall day RG and I went to the Isle of Wight to check things out, ride a hover craft, and see a fancy house. And we did all of those things. To start I should mention that I am with in walking distance from no fewer than three different ferry launches, and there are several launches from each of them an hour. So there are at least a dozen opportunities an hour to get to the island. However for the first nine months or so in Portsmouth I would spend 3, 4, 5, 6, even 10 hours in the car to get all over England to go site seeing. Well that has changed I think now I will try to do things more locally at least until I leave.

One of the best parts of the trip, and unfortunately one of the shortest, was the ride to the Island. And I say ride because that is what it was a ride. We decided to take one of the few running hovercrafts left in the world to the Island. I have been fascinated with hover crafts since I was a kid and my parents, er I mean Santa Claus, gave me a remote controlled hover craft for Christmas. I remember trying that thing on everything, concrete, sand, ice, and water the whole bit. This fun didn’t last forever I think I used it off and on for three years then driving and what not seemed more important. But I always wondered what being on a full sized one would be like. So I finally had my chance, we bought a round trip ticket including bus fare and entry to Queen Victoria’s mansion on the island at the Hover port mid morning, waited our turn to board, and strapped in.

I was pretty cool, the way the whole craft lifts up when the large fan fills the bladder with air. RG was amazed by the way the craft rotates as if falling backwards off the launch pad. I loved the way it cruised above the sand and then the surf for 10 minutes to the island. It was surprisingly smooth, and must have been well insulated because it didn’t seem loud. All in all it was a bit surreal. The hovercraft itself looks just like the one from Rumble in Bronx and the cab is completely contained. It certainly looks like it was built in the late eighties or early nineties from the plastics and colors used in the passenger area. The window are set a little too high to get a good view out of, and the ride isn’t smooth enough to stand at the main window in front, so you don’t get the best view while cruising. But this didn’t make the trip any less fun. Now in a single year I have been on a Hydrofoil and a Hovercraft. Seriously, how cool is that?

Once on the Isle of Wight the Hovercraft launch is basically attached tot he main bus station in town. We had to wait about 15 minutes for the double decker to show up and the ride to Victoria’s mansion was about ½ hour. What amazed me here was how populated the Island was. I thought it would be like an Island off Maine with a few people and the town had many four or five roads with a typical main street. This is not the case there are at least five descent sized towns of thousands. In fact the island seems more populated than parts of the regular coast. We saw a lot of good sized homes, a lot of shops, pubs, restaurants, and all the normal city living amenities. The Mansion was a bit in the country but not by much.

Victoria’s Mansion on the Isle of Wight is called Osborne House. I honestly don’t know why and before we went there I didn’t even know that the Queen had owned and lived there. I just never looked it up, I went because the locals in Portsmouth said it was a nice place to visit. They were certainly right about that. It is a very nice park with several sites including the large mansion to visit. I won’t go into to much detail as I am starting to feel like the descriptions of these places are running together but it was a nice country estate fit for a queen. It also had no relations to Ozzie and his family but this wasn’t a big disappointment. To finish off the trip we also took a walk through the town called Ryde and had dinner at a nice bar/restaurant were we ate something called whitebait along with some topas. All in all one of our nicer days out, though it seems like that is all we get in England.