The bikes have left. The town is a lot quieter this morning. It is amazing the difference. Yesterday afternoon the prom was rammed. Lots of people kicked out of lodgings and campsites and hanging around waiting to go to the boat. The queue for the ice cream parlour was the longest I’ve seen. Still lots of motorhomes around. I suspect that they couldn’t get a booking on the boat until later in the week.
Peel is getting back to normal. We have a couple of days left before we head back across the water ourselves. Seats booked in the Exec Lounge on the ten ey em Mananan to Liverpeul on Wednesday. They give you unlimited soft drinks and lots of biscuits 🙂 What’s not to like?
Lunch with Paul and Wendy at Greens restaurant in St Johns today so had a light breakfast. Then we are pondering heading to Maughold to look at the Celtic crosses. Quite excited about that. Been thinking about doing it for years but Maughold is a bit out of the way, if that can be said for anywhere on the Isle of Man.
Years ago when I had a summer job working on the Manx Electric Railway there was a guy there, a coach painter, who mentioned that he knew the mayor of Maughold. We all laughed at the time but hey. Who knows? Maybs there is a mayor. There can’t be more than a few houses there. I’ll let you know.
The summer employment on the electric trams was a plumb job. Probably the best holiday job you could get on the Island. It paid union rates and in a good week in the summer of nineteen eighty I could take home eighty five quid. That was a lot of money in those days for a kid with no overheads and a pint of lager costing something like thirty five pence. A night out cost two pounds. Those were the days.
Dad used to drop me off on the prom on his way to work and I’d either walk or blag a lift off a horse tram. I knew some of the tram conductors – one or two of them were in my year in school. The horse trams were the second best summer job. You did have to work a lot harder though. On the electric trams you mostly just sat at the back keeping an eye on the overhead trolley. It was a great job.
Not been on a tram this trip. Tomorrow is the last chance. We shall see.