A Little Wander Around Ryde Pier.
I've been a bit busier than usual of late, but I managed to squeeze in some time to get some shots of Ryde, mostly at the pier. The pier itself is a main travel route to and from the mainland in England, there are a few ways to travel and one is by hovercraft, another by ferry (via a train from the pier on the route back) the other is to swim! haha
Ryde is situated on the north-east coast on the Isle of Wight, and is the home town of one David Icke. Unfortunately, I've yet to bump into him, though I think he is busy on his world tour right now.
Ryde is one of the more resort-like places on the island and very popular with the tourists from the mainland to come over as it's just so easy to get here and takes no time at all to get the ferry or even better the hovercraft which takes a matter of minutes!
Here's one hovercraft going out and one coming in!
Check out the iridescent water effect coming off the back of this hovercraft
On the pier, there was once a steem railway. Sorry.. steam railway! ;) It ran on these tracks that go from the train station on the pier out into the ocean a bit where people would get off and then board the boat.
Nowadays this train line is still used to transport people to and from the ferry service, but interestingly, instead of the steam train, they now use former London underground carriages that were initially used in the 1960's! I think this is great, recycling these old carriages and it also adds character to this place I think.
In fact, all of the Island train carriages are these sturdy, old London underground carriages. One difference is definitely the amount of people on them over here, way less!
You can of course drive up to the ferry as well.
The pigeons seem to have a nice home on these tracks!
Below, is a shot of the inside the train station which as you can see, it isn't too busy here today. I like this old station, it's so old skool and has loads of character.
Here, is the main row of businesses along the pier, in the background is the famous King Lud pub. Every year, this island hosts a huge scooter rally, so the place gets literally taken over by thousands of beautiful Lambretta and Vespa scooters all ridden by mods and skinheads (my old man being one of them) I remember the first time I ever came here, I must of been about 10 years old, my dad, being a scooterist himself bought me along to this rally at the time and it's a lot of fun! So this area below will be awash with classic 60's Italian scooters everywhere for at least one weekend of the year in late summer.
But right now, it is very quiet..
In this photo I put some filters on it.
Rock the Kasbah!!
Well this was just a short one, I have barely scratched the surface of Ryde so expect more episode's on this place as I delve a little deeper into it. This was sort of a short and sweet trip but I definitely felt it was worth posting.
Sources:
Scooter image courtesy of theofficialbrand
All other images taken by myself.
With love,
Jon :)
