Ryde Buoys

As is our custom, we caught the Island Line train to Ryde Esplanade at least once, on this occasion to stoll along the fine esplanade, taking in a little sand along the way.

Yaverland ripples

But I start with some ripples in the sand at Yaverland, by way of comparison with the sand to come. With these ripples prompting a reverie about the information content of such an image. A few kilobytes to describe the texture, a few kilobytes to describe the general top left to bottom right drift of the ripples and a bit of noise thrown in for realism? Maybe a thousandth of the 6Mb the image actually occupies?

At Ryde we admired the flashy summer flowers which were to be seen all over the place. Lots of sunny sea & sand, one egret.

Strange reinforcement, enlarged from the original

While sitting on a concrete wall somewhere, I failed to compute the reinforcing bars. Not like anything that I was used to.

Carex pendula

A fine bed of carex pendula, behind the sea facing rampant of Puckpool Battery. Not a very good shot at this distance, but I was too idle to walk round to get a better one. But we did walk around to the café there to take tea and rock cake. Rock cake not quite up to the same standard as those sold in the café at Yaverland, but entirely acceptable.

Putting garden, café visible left

Unusual flower

Leaving the café, we admired the nicely planted putting garden, almost to the point of having a go, but we restrained ourselves, opting instead to sit on an elevated bench and admire the view over instead. Including a possible wren which popped out of the bushes in front of us. BH thought that the unusual flower, climbing all over the place, was the sort of thing that was common in the Canary Islands.

View looking towards Portsmouth

View along the tideline

Ryde ripples

More Ryde ripples

As may be deduced from the snaps above, I am rather fond of big, flat beaches. The worms - sand eels? - making the mounds were quite sensitive to pressure, as the few mounds I saw in action stopped very abruptly as I drew near. Perhaps I should put myself forward for the next Boring Conference? See reference 2 for this year's event.

And so to the Ryde Buoys, aka the Three Buoys of reference 1, an esplanade café which has raised its game from the olden days of trays of tea & sticky buns, and where we have both eaten and drunk in the past. See, for example, reference 3.

The wine

For starter we had pink hummus, that is to say more or less regular hummus but flavoured with beetroot. Rather good. Followed by a confection of cod. Cod not too clever, covered with far too many bits and bobs. Another chef who gets carried away by presentation instead of substance - although it was alleged by the waiter that the cod had never seen the inside of a freezer and came from a usually reliable suppler. It was also rather dear, so not very good value either. But BH was pleased with her dessert, which seemed to consist of a dollop of ice cream with some expresso coffee poured over it. Wine good, but see reference 4. Ambience, view and service good.

Ellis Peters

From a pile of books somewhere along the way I acquired a slender volume by one Ellis Peters, of whom I had never before heard. It turned out to be quite unreadable, at least by me, and was subsequently tucked away somewhere behind the television in our holiday cottage. Also known as Edith Pargeter, the lady responsible for Cadfael. Unusually, and for no particular reason given in Wikipedia, fluent in Czech. Perhaps she was a closet reader, in the original Czech, of 'The Good Soldier Švejk', something of a Bible for Czechs (and for me) growing up in the middle of the 20th century.

Grabbed the last Guardian from the shop at the bottom of Union Street and then caught the train back to Brading. Possible buzzard en-route. And a collection of Shi Tzus in West Street on arrival. Including one retired male, kept on for sentimental reasons.

Reference 1: https://www.threebuoys.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/05/boring.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/09/birthday-treat.html.

Reference 4: http://www.riojavega.com/en/recent-news/rioja-vega-coleccion-tempranillo-blanco-2017-spain’s-best-white-wine/. It seems that our wine was very well thought of by its maker, even winning an important prize.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Pargeter.