Pete celebrated his birthday this weekend. He did it in style, at The Priory Bay Hotel in the Isle of Wight. This hotel boasts its own private beach complete with a stream to be dammed and rerouted, rock pools, shells of different shapes and colours, and a great deal of sand. This whole shebang was the Summer Outing of the very nice company he works for, so there were plenty of willing hands to build the enormous sandcastle demanded by the boss (big enough for me to sit in the middle, with a moat)
We had a large, pleasant room with a view over the English Channel and an extremely comfortable bed (which I could have spent more time in). We had two trips on a hovercraft and a go on the dodgems on Sandown Pier. But more than anything else, we had food.
I’m not kidding, this was a gourmet tour of the eastern parts of the IOW. The amount of food we ate could probably have fed us at home for a week.
On arrival in Ryde on Friday just before lunchtime, we decided that fish and chips were necessary. I suppose if I had thought it through, having pre-ordered two lunches and being aware that evening meals were also planned for the weekend, I would have suggested that alfalfa salad would be sufficient for the time being. Instead we dashed straight into the first sit-down chippy we saw and enjoyed an excellent meal. Bernard experienced scampi for the first time, and did not behave particularly well, having been up very early after a rather bad night.
We then took a taxi to the hotel, just south of Seaview. We booked high tea for the boy and then headed straight to the beach, where we spent the afternoon digging with shells, in the absence of a spade. The others arrived over the course of the afternoon, and we checked into our room and discovered how lovely it was. Bernard ate a mountain of spaghetti bolognese, but left the home-made ice cream for Pete to finish. He continued to behave badly pretty much until he was asleep, at which point I escaped to join the party in the restaurant, and was plied with wine. It was necessary.
Dinner at the restaurant was delicious. I had gazpacho, goat’s cheese risotto, and birthday cake. At the time, I felt deprived of a pudding; but I realise now that one less course, over the whole weekend, was a good thing.
A few hours of sleep followed, and then down for a cooked breakfast. Bernard ordered porridge and didn’t eat it; I ordered a full english and did.
It was a grey and damp morning, and the sea was reportedly too choppy for the planned boat trip to take place. Our taxis were summoned and we headed to Sandown for old-fashioned fun at the pier. The pier was your traditional seaside entertainment, from amusement arcade and mini golf to lewd jokey photo-cut-out thingies. Bernard played a racing game with Pete, squirted water at some fireman, went on his first dodgems, and trounced everyone at air hockey. (There is some rumour that the grown-ups let him win).
Lunch was in The Pond Cafe in Bonchurch, which we were informed was the best restaurant on the island. It was extremely small, so as a party of 13 we had pretty much all of it. Wisely, I seated Bernard by the door so we could get out once he got bored; at that point I had no inkling it would take around three hours for us to finish the four courses and wait for some lingerers to have coffee.
This whole weekend had been kept secret from Pete, it being his birthday treat, so I had pre-ordered lunches without consulting him. We therefore shared a carpaccio of beef with parmesan and rocket, and a large pile of peas and broad beans as a starter. This followed enormous bowls of warm olives and cashew nuts, inappropriately described as appetisers. They would have been enough on their own. One assumes, of course, that the portions in places like these are going to be tiny, but no. My main course was a large calf’s liver with vegetables, and then there was a cheeseboard. I liked the IOW soft cheese, but found the blue quite peppery. Yes, I really was still eating. Bernard had eaten a lot of olives and cashew nuts, and then all the salmon and none of the chips in his large children’s meal, and then got bored as predicted and gone off outside.
The home-going taxi paused to allow for the purchase of proper buckets and spades, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon making the aforementioned large sandcastle for the boss to sit in. Sadly Bernard and I did not witness any sitting, as it was time for high tea. You should know that the high tea cost £16.50 per child, and Bernard managed one sausage and a small lump of mash before demanding payment of his bribe of being allowed back to the beach to see the finished castle.
Our evening meal that night was at The Boathouse pub in Seaview, ten minutes down the road. I was uncomfortable being so far from the hotel, with a colleague’s parent minding the baby monitor. I was also uncomfortable because I had already eaten half a farmyard worth of food and it wasn’t all that long since I’d put away the last cracker of lunchtime. So we skipped the starter and opted for a salad. Ah, more goat’s cheese. An entire goat’s cheese and a load of pointless lettuce. I do really love goat’s cheese, though. It rained, and we strolled outside on the seafront, looking at the lights of Portsmouth. Bernard was sleeping peacefully when we got back to the hotel.
A grey morning dawned on Pete’s birthday, and Bernard was up bright and early as always. One advantage of a hotel room is being able to stick cBeebies on and get back into bed with my head under the pillow until a more civilised hour. We were finally prompted out of our bed by his grumbling for breakfast, and again we were first in the restaurant. I sensibly stuck to fruit and toast, and did I mention that the coffee was phenomenally strong? From breakfast we went directly to the beach and claimed the stream as our own. This activity filled the morning, culminating in a dash back to the hotel to clean up the children before the check-out deadline.
Taxis arrived to carry us to our final meal on the island: Pete’s birthday lunch event took place at The Seaview Hotel and Restaurant, which was an odd place with the appearance of a very ordinary hotel as you went in, but the further back you got, the smarter it became. We had a long table, possibly the first time the entire group sat down for a meal together, children an’ all. Bernard sat next to his new friend Jack, and they entertained themselves by drawing pictures and presenting them to other members of the party. I feasted on grilled mushroom with goat’s cheese, roast pork with an anomalous but pleasant yorkshire pudding, the ubiquitous cheeseboard, and birthday cake. Pete was given gifts. A taxi returned us to Ryde and the hovercraft, and we went home.