Mick & Lyn's overseas adventure 2013: Sunday 8 September 2013. Isle of Man. Point of Ayre, Jurby and Peel.

This was posted from the ferry the Ben-My-Chree en route from Douglas, Isle of Man to Heysham UK across the Irish Sea.

Today, Sunday 8 September 2013, the weather forecast was for further showers.

Lyn didn’t want to go out today so stayed home to do some washing and watch the Formula 1 race from Italy. She also needed to finish off a scarf she was knitting for Davina.

Mick, Roy and Davina decided to go to the Isle of Man’s equivalent of John ‘o Groats, a place called Point of Ayre which is the northern most point of the Isle of Man, passing through Ramsey on the way.

At a place called Bride, they got caught up in an annual push bike run called ‘The End to End Ride’ conducted by the Manx Bicycle Club. During the run they pedal from the northernmost point on the island to the southernmost point, a distance by road of about 44 miles (71 klms).

When we arrived at Point of Ayre we found it was a fairly desolate place and although the sun was shining, it was quite cool. On the road in the yellow flowered gorse and the purple flowered heather looked spectacular.

We spotted a few seabirds including Gannets which were just flying past and not doing any fishing. Roy was looking for Manx Shearwaters but didn’t see any.

At the Point of Ayre are two lighthouses, an old one and a newer one, both of which are working. There was also a huge fog horn to warn shipping of the presence of the Island in thick fog.

We had walked about 250 metres from the car when it started belting down with rain so we made a hasty retreat back to shelter. Mick got Roy to take his picture in front of the old lighthouse on the way in the pouring rain.

Fortunately this was the only time that the rain bothered us as we traveled south to Jurby to have a look at the transport museum and the famous junk shop and book store.

The transport museum had some very nice examples of steam driven, petrol driven and diesel driven vehicles including buses, trucks, cars and transaction engines covering quite a time period and the entry was free.

Mick had a conversation with one of the keen members of a team who were rebuilding many of the items including a Fowler steam powered tractor that had spent all its working life in Australia. They had had several gears made for the gear box at great expense and in so doing had added an extra higher gear to double the 6mph top speed.

There was a very nice bitumen Go Kart track run by the Isle of Man Kart Racing association next to the museum and we watched the Karts for a while roaring around the circuit.

We then went to Jurby junk shop and book shop to have a look around. The junk shop was jam packed with thousands of items, mostly new, of just about everything. We didn’t have time to look at it all but there was quite an amazing array of stuff.

The book shop contained thousands of books stacked to the ceilings and Roy bought a book on “Chess for kids” to take to his chess club.

We then went further down the west coast to Peel.

Peel is another small seaside village with a nice beach and marina and is also home to the uninhabited Peel Castle which is right by the sea. There was also a motor museum which contained one car and one motor bike which are housed in what used to be a small rail ticket office.

The guy that ran it was very enthusiastic about the P50 Peel car on display plus heaps of memorabilia from years gone by. The P50 is apparently in the Guinness book of records as the smallest road going car ever made.

After a busy day we headed home for a rest and later, went to the The Liverpool Arms pub for dinner.