Sandown

Having done Ryde the day before, it was clearly the turn of Sandown. Parked in the zoo, cheaper for a long stay than the municipal car park.

A place which seemed to be climbing back into business, after the smashing of our seaside hotel business by the cheap foreign package, with a fair number of people about and with a big new Premier Inn on the seafront, but there were still quite a lot of more or less derelict hotels, including the once smart looking establishment above. Perhaps they used to specialise in romantic weekends, away from the naval dockyard over the water.

We inspected the Sandown Honour Trail, a series of plaques neatly fixed onto the wall between the pavement and the sand. Explained in a rather perfunctory way at reference 1.

Operations at the Beach Shack Bar somewhat modified to cope with the plague, so reference 3 a little misleading. And the menu had changed. But as it happened, we had taken a picnic with us and were able to take our lunch on the beach rather than in the bar, sheltering from the wind in the ample shelter of some concrete steps. In which way, we coped with crab sandwiches seeming to have gone missing from their menu.

Irritated by the poor detailing at the right hand end of this lintel, part of a nearly new block of seafront flats. Not properly thought through at all. Done on the cheap. The bricklayers and masons of a hundred years ago did much better at this sort of thing, at least on expensive, stone trimmed buildings in the centre of London, say in the vicinity of Cavendish Square.

Visited Boots for a spot of skin cream, to find myself behind an altercation between a not very well lady of middle years and the pharmacist. Unfortunately, the pharmacist was not English and though his English was pretty good, he failed to find the right words to soothe this lady, who was slowly getting cross and rude. It seems that she needed a whole lot of stuff, rather last minute, some of which was not in stock and was going to take perhaps 24 hours to arrive. Glad I am not in that sort of customer facing business.

At some point, we came across another new-to-me charity, the one at reference 5. All about something called the hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Not easily summarised in a few words, but rather more words are to be found at reference 6. While rather more accessible words are to be found at reference 7. Seemingly, potentially serious, fortunately rare.

Back to the café at Yaverland to find that it was shut on account of it being Monday. So no rock cakes. But I did find a rather nice three foot cane to add to my collection of same. You never know when you might need such a thing.

Reference 1: http://www.sandowntowncouncil.gov.uk/_UserFiles/Files/_Other/Sandown%20Honour%20Trail.pdf.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/spyder.html. This also being the day of the Spyder, previously noticed.

Reference 3: https://www.beachshackbar.co.uk/. 

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/wash-up-from-other-island.html. Our last visit to the Beach Shack Bar.

Reference 5: https://www.ehlers-danlos.org/.

Reference 6: https://www.ehlers-danlos.org/what-is-eds/information-on-eds/hypermobile-eds-and-hypermobility-spectrum-disorders/. 

Reference 7: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ehlers-danlos-syndromes/.