A Very Different A3!
A few months back, we spent a night at the Moxy Excel hotel in London's Docklands. It's located just across the marina from London City Airport, which is an airport neither of us had ever used, but had heard good things about.
Taking a little stroll on a warm evening, we could watch the planes landing, and then realised that they were pretty much coming straight down the Thames; and if we stood on a bridge, they'd be flying right over our heads.
"WANT TO DO THAT!", we thought.
Now it so happened that our September plans needed to be changed at very short notice, so maybe this was an opportunity. Where can you get to from LCY that might be interesting? Well it turns out that one of the destinations it serves is the Isle of Man. Curiously, although neither of us had ever been there, Amanda's father actually visited quite regularly for the TT races. Not as a rider, not as a fan, but as a lawyer specialising in personal injury! Amanda reckons the IoM paid her school fees, so it seemed only right that we should check it out.
Other than the fact of the TT races, about the only thing we knew about the place was that it was one of these slightly odd Crown Dependencies, which are not part of the United Kingdom but not exactly foreign countries either. With time tight, we couldn't mess around doing too much research, and there weren't a huge number of accommodation options not already booked up, but we found a very nice-looking little cottage for two near a village on the West coast.
When it came to sorting out the flights, though, we couldn't quite make the timings work for LCY-IOM, so we ended up with separate bookings: Out from Gatwick with EasyJet, then back to City with LoganAir. That meant that we wouldn't be able to drive and leave the car, so taxis or public transport it would have to be. Train to Gatwick seemed pretty quick and easy, so we'd do that, but getting home again by DLR/tube/train seemed a bit of a faff, so we thought we'd probably be better off with a cab. Now although we used to regularly get a local cab company to ferry us to and from the airport, we discovered some years back that it barely cost any more to get a package with a hotel room the night before and valet parking for the duration of the trip. We've not taken a cab in donkeys' years. So let's enter the 21st century and download the Uber app!
Looks good, we can make an advance booking. Only we can't. Seems that we need to build up some credit before we can book that length of journey ahead of time. Ah well, we'll see what happens when it happens.
So that's the background, let us begin:
Day 1 - Friday 1 September
Day 2 - Saturday 2 September
Day 3 - Sunday 3 September
Day 5 - Monday 4 September
Day 6 - Tuesday 5 September
Day 7 - Wednesday 6 September
Day 8 - Thursday 7 September
Day 9 - Friday 8 September
Day 10 - Saturday 9 September
Day 11- Sunday 10 September
year index