IOM day 7

Friday 6th August 2010

1700
Well we’ve ‘done’ Peel today – it took us a whole 4 hours from leaving here to getting back again.

Last night I was chatting to Neil on msn and happened to mention that I’ve got VERY little space on my hard drive and would that cause it to run slowly. He said definitely yes and then talked me through a couple of ways to try and get it to run quicker. I defragged my computer and ran a cleaner programme – it didn’t really make any difference but I couldn’t really expect it to work miracles without some REAL organising / deleting of files. I did also order myself a new external hard drive so that I can free up some space on this hard drive so hopefully make this computer run better.

When I went up to bed last night I was feeling daft and bored so I took some photos of what I can see while lying in bed hahaha

This morning I got up at about 9ish and had some breakfast before going back up for a shower.

I also checked my car’s tyre pressures after yesterday’s scare. All the tyres were fine, none were below 30psi but I put the fronts to 35 and the backs to 39. I haven’t had any problems today but I’ll check them again in the morning just in case. What I didn’t like is that where the cars are parked there’s LOADS of flies it’s really horrible!!!!!

I kind of planned a route into Peel but I wasn’t certain exactly which road I’d be turning right along so I gave up with writing routes and decided to just follow road signs to Peel. There was a road we’d seen to the right which was marked as 4 miles to Peel so we explored that road. Unfortunately it was a little skinny road and looked like it was single track so we abandoned that road and went back to the main roads.

We got to Peel easily enough though we weren’t sure where we were going to park. We spotted a sign for free parking so followed it and found a car park which was rather full!! We drove round randomly for a short time then a lady came over and asked were we looking for a parking space, when we said we were she showed us to a side road alongside the car park where she was parked. Obviously she knew she was leaving so there was at least one space available when she moved. As it happened there should’ve been 2 spaces when she left but I waited till she’d gone so I could get in really easily.

We then walked through the car park to the town centre. There’s very little in Peel, we wandered up the ‘main’ shopping street although there’s not very much. We went into a couple of different little newsagent type shops to buy souvenirs and sweets and things.

We were then wandering round looking at our map and a man asked us where we lost – we said we weren’t, just pondering but he did tell us how to get to the prom so we decided to follow what he said down to the prom. When we got to the prom we found the ice cream parlour that Chris had mentioned and also we could see Peel castle.

We decided we’d probably finished our shopping bits so we went for lunch in a café. We went into the café but there didn’t seem to be any tables at all. We were about to walk out again but there was a man and his mum sitting at a big table with 2 spare spaces so they said we could join them. They were very nice people, the lady was talking about when she was in Liverpool many years ago.

I was supposed to be paying for lunch but the café didn’t have a card machine – there are loads of places here without card facilities, even the small shops at home take cards :-o Oh well, it meant my mum had to pay for lunch as well – oops.

After our lunch we went back to the prom for Davison’s famous ice cream. We both decided on a tub with 3 scoops in but that was an awful lot of ice cream!!! I couldn’t finish my ice cream even though it was delicious :-( If I had finished I probably would’ve been sick :-(

After our ice cream we went back to the car to go back to the cottage. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was getting back cos we’d come in through a one-way system. I decided to follow the signs for Douglas as that was almost directly opposite Peel but on the other side of the island. It turned out my theory was correct cos we ended up back on the same road we’d come in on.

We got back to the cottage just after 1500 without any real plans. We tidied up a little bit and I also filled in the guest satisfaction survey from the cottage. There are about 6 questions to fill in with one line each for the answer but I did more than 1 line on every question and also did a PTO and wrote about a third of a page extra haha. I now need to decide what to put in the visitors’ book, the survey is only seen by the owners but the guest book is seen by everyone.

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Right well this will definitely be my last update while I’m actually in the IOM. I still haven’t thought of anything for the visitors’ book!!

We’re more or less fully packed now ready for tomorrow and we’ve had our tea. I’ve also stripped the bed which I’m not sleeping on.

Obviously in the morning we need to put everything into our boxes and then pack the car. I’ll also re-check the cars’ tyre pressures and hope that they’re ok. Once I’m back on the mainland even if I do get a puncture it’s easy to sort – go to any National or Kwik Fit garage.

Goodbye from the Isle Of Man :-)