Today is going to be an eventful day. For one thing shortly, Pooil Vaaish will arrive to fit granite work tops in our kitchen. Barbara has wanted granite work tops ever since we owned our first kitchen. Brother Lenny and wife Rosie own Pooil Vaaish so after securing a very favourable rate the work will finally commence today. This means it would be probably in our best interests to go out for the day. So the camper van is loaded ready and within the next hour we shall head for the Point of Ayre. I don’t get to the Point of Ayre as often as I would like to these days. Like most other places on this Island, it is one of my favourite places. I get just as excited and worked up about going to the Ayres as anyone else would if they were going on holiday abroad. I have never had a foreign holiday apart from a day trip to Norway in my life. It is not something I yearn for though. When I have time off, I love to go with the dog and no restrictions, to any of the wonderful places around the Island which up until now due to my work, just did not allow me enough time to do. Two months ago I was running a business every day and apart from dog walks during mornings and evenings, I had no time to go anywhere. Now thanks to a bit of a setback with the cancer and chemo, I have more time than I know what to do with. Anyway back to the Point of Ayre, I guess those who market our island from a tourist point of view don’t send their photographers out to the Ayres with a view to showing off the wonderful scenic photographs on the pages of our holiday brochures. Yet the Ayres are beautiful to those who look. Visually you will not be bowled over by its beauty. However, if you listen, walk and look solitude, peace and contentment abound. The sound of the sea washing over the shingle of the Ayres is pure and natural. The seabirds and wildlife are there because they choose to be and, not because of an aquarium or, because of a sea life centre or whatever. No one will try to sell you a kiss me quick hat, stick of rock or cart you off on a donkey ride. The terns and gannets will make no charge for their natural performances. You can walk for hours among the sand dunes with the breeze blowing in your face and the salt air filling your lungs. All this to the music of the sea and the choirs of birds regaling you and, it’s all absolutely free.

When we lived in Ramsey we would spend many a weekend in a Bambi camper van out on the Ayres. Barbara use to look out over the sea to Whithorn through the binoculars. Whithorn is the nearest part of the UK to the Island, some 16 miles across from the Point. We often wondered what it might be like there and, eventually our curiosity got the better of us. So Barbara and I with our two dogs, boarded the King Orry as it was then and drove up through the Lake District and Southwest Scotland to Whithorn, a distance of around 200 miles. A heck of a journey to get to a place you could almost throw a stone to from the Point of Ayre lighthouse.

Our arrival in Whithorn was a disappointment to say the least. We parked the camper van in amongst all the litter, broken bottles and tin cans. Being a little short of one or two provisions we ambled over to the ram shackled little shop an old boy was closing for the afternoon. We asked politely, “What time do you open in the morning?” “Whenever I wakeup” replied the grumpy old git. Still at least there was a pub and because it was called The Steam Packet, , we guessed it most have some kind of IOM connection. We wandered in and having ordered a pint for myself and a drink for Barbara I enthusiastically explained to the barman, that we had come from the Isle of Man and were looking forward to spending a few days holiday here. “Oh” right says he. “We get ‘em all the time over here from there, they are always coming over here, must be somat wrong with the place!”

The next day we left Whithorn and headed for the town of Newton Stewart. We parked our camper on a lorry park and spent our days walking the forests with our two dogs and drinking the nights away in the Central bar with landlord George and some of the nicest folk you could ever wish to meet.

Well, that’s it for today, I am off to the Point of Ayre now as Pooil Vaaish are pulling up outside, and I will leave you with a thought for today; The Isle of Man is still one of the safest places to live in. It is still one of the few places where you can bolt your door with a boiled carrot.