Just an update from last night. I had gone to supper with Derek and his wife Angela. Derek picked me up and brought me back home which was good because I don’t think I would have found his place easily. After a lovely bit of conversation and drinks, I was treated to a lovely salmon dinner, followed by coffee and dessert. Home by 10:00. The treatment I have received at this end has been nothing short of terrific and reminds me to be welcoming to visitors to our area when I get home. Here is a picture of Derek and Angela.

April 25
Up at 6:00. Rain had fallen over night and likely had just stopped. Hoping for a clear day but expecting it to be cooler. After a good breakfast I caught the 8:20 bus to Chichester and after some minor confusion took the 700 to Portsmouth at 9:55. I was able to buy a single ticket that was for unlimited trips today on the bus, the Cat Ferry return to Isle of Wight and bus service on the island all for 16.50 pounds. That is a very good deal. The bus stops frequently on the shore route and took about an hour to arrive in Portsmouth. The sun is shining and the temperature is about 15. There is a breeze though and I am glad I wore a jacket. I basically walked off the bus directly to the Fast Ferry Terminal and we departed for the Isle of Wight at 11:20. Crossing takes about 18 minutes and is reasonably smooth. There are a lot of sailboats out on the water, but the ferry goes right through them. After landing I walked about a half mile across a walk/roadway to the island arriving in the town of Ryde. It is a fairly small island with about 70 miles of paved roads around the perimeter. I checked at the Tourist Bureau for information on Dinosaur Isle, the main attraction for me. If I had time I would consider something else. The bus station was right across the road and a bus comes along every 15 minutes. It is very efficient for a small island. It took about 20 minutes to go about 10 miles due to the frequency of stops, but I ended up in the town of Sanddown, sort a seaside resort. A ten minute walk along the coast put me at Dinosaur Isle.
Along the way I saw a lot of children playing some sort of an organized sport on the beach, lots of people walking dogs and several families playing in the sand. Off in the distance was a huge chalk cliff. The admission to Dinosaur Isle, a museum, is 5 pounds. It had a very good illustration of how geology has played such an important role in the formation of fossils and had lots of examples of fossilized mammal bones and marine fossils. They even had a section on Ichthyosaurs, large marine dinosaurs and an illustration of the largest one collected in British Columbia by Betsy Nicholls (deceased) of the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Also they had a picture of Samuel Buckland, a prominent palaeontologist and I wonder if he is related to the Garden Manager, Jim Buckland. I must ask him. They also explained how rocks called flint are formed. As you will know from previous postings, flint is the prevalent rock material in this region. Apparently sponges have spines which are made of silica. When sponges die en masse or over time where they are heavily populated, the soft material decomposes and the silica spines are left. They are then compressed over great lengths of time through the chalk mud in a marine environment and form flint.

I was too hungry to continue at this time and went next door for something to eat. It was 2:00 and I went next door to what looked like a nice restaurant and I chose a crab sandwich which was very disappointing, perhaps my first poor meal, while I was here. Oh well! I returned to the museum and continued through the dinosaur collection which though relatively small was extremely well documented and displayed. They have a few complete or near complete skeletons of sauropods. I struck up a conversation with Peter, the manager and he was very helpful. He was interested in where I was from and I told him about Joggins and Parrsboro. I also complimented him on the Betsy Nicholls reference and told him about my association with the RTM. He said that their curator, Steve has been to North America to give talks, likely at symposia and I’m sure I would have a good time talking to him. Peter directed me to the cliffs where I could look for fossils and I spent a very pleasant 2 hours walking on the sand scouring the area near the base. There is a lot of erosion there so lots of mud slides are occurring naturally. I did turn up one piece of material that had lots of trace fossils on it, likely worm tubes, and when I turned it over discovered a small tooth about 5mm long. It is permissible to keep fossils collected on the shore so it will be coming home to my collection. I also scooped up a little sand for Carol as she likes to collect sand from beaches we have visited.

I walked back into town and caught the bus back to Ryde. It was about 4:45. There are a lot of nice shops on Union St. Going up towards the town centre so I took a stroll. I got one really nice picture looking back at Portsmouth and could see what is called the Spinnaker Building, Portsmouth’s Millennium project. I captured a picture of house prices in a realty store and it is apparent that they are much more reasonable than the mainland. Upon further investigation, the employment situation is not too bright on the island; so many people travel the ferries daily to the mainland for employment. This would definitely have a dampening effect. One business that seems pretty popular is pubs however and as it was nearing time and lunch had not been that successful I decided to try out S Fowler & Co. Pub a JD Weatherspoon franchise who were having a Festival of Ales. You could get a burger and fries and an ale for 5.10 pounds, a very good price. I chose one from Stoke on Trent, a dark ale that looked like Guinness but was said to be flavoured with Chocolate and Vanilla. It was called Titanic Velvet Curtain and was very good, despite its name. The burger was good and the fries were home cut. One thing I really like about British prices is that they include the VAT in the menu price so that is what you pay. I think we should be able to devise a program in Canada that does that even if we have to adjust other variables because of provincial disparity in taxation.

I finished my meal and ale and walked back to the ferry terminal. The tide is dead low now so I understand why the terminal is so far offshore. One other method of getting here is by hovercraft and I have 2 good pictures, one where it is 50 metres out in the water and another where it is 50 metres on the mud. The channel now is dead calm and the ride back was very smooth. On the way over I had struck up a conversation with a couple who were going to the island for a family affair. They were very interested in what I was doing in the area and I saw them again on the way back so we sat together on the ferry and talked about our respective days. It is always my accent that gives me away and from there conversations about where I’m from just naturally occur. They are always fascinated by Canada. It is amazing how many of them have a relative here but it invariably turns out to be Vancouver.
Once again getting the right bus back to Chichester was a little confusing but I struck up a conversation with another couple who were basically going my way and between us we managed to get on the correct bus. Again the conversation developed over my volunteering at West Dean and what a marvellous idea they think it is. We both had to change buses in Chichester and since they were about 30 minutes off we decided to go to a nearby pub, have an ale and continue the conversation. The gent introduced me to Abbott’s Ale, a very nice brew indeed. These Brits really know their ales. We said good night and went to our respective bus stops. At mine, there was a fellow about my age waiting. We exchanged pleasantries and again the story of my being here was repeated. As it turns out he had been involved in some of the instruction at West Dean College and was very knowledgeable about the Edward James Foundation. He recommended that I visit Bosham back toward Portsmouth and see the church there that is reputed to be the burial place of King Kanute. We sat together on the bus and he said that he thought I was the first Nova Scotian he had ever spoken to. Well there is one less of the uninitiated in the world today. I got home about 9:15, had a talk with Cathy and Nigel about my experiences today and went off to my room to read before going to bed. Turns out I only read two pages of a good PD James novel and fell asleep. Pictures today are of the chalk cliffs at Sanddown, Sailboats on Isle of Wight and a dinosaur from Dinosaur Isle