Up fairly early this morning, and the last few bits were put into the bags before we set off just after half past eight. Our journey to Portsmouth went amazingly smoothly - we didn't even stop at the Hindhead lights, never mind queue. I pointed out the official "holiday starts here" bridge to Jake as we neared our destination, and we arrived at the ferry terminal at about twenty to eleven.
We didn't quite manage to make it onto the eleven o'clock (Clare) but were on the upper car deck of the 11.30 (Helen). The highlight of the crossing was seeing the pride of the American navy, the George H W Bush aircraft carrier, in the Solent.
We arrived at the hotel at about half past twelve, too early to check in, and so we wandered along the Esplanade with our bag of 2p's. Our collection of key rings has begun, and we also won a pirate rubber and a mini pack of cards.
After an ice cream we came back to the hotel, checked in and unpacked. Jake has given our room a thumbs up, and the beds scored well of the Jake comfy-o-meter. We relaxed in our room for a little while before deciding to pay a visit to Shanklin. We stopped off at Tesco on the way to stock up with biscuits and sachets of hot chocolate. I picked up the new Bond book for the bargain price of a fiver (not bad as the cover price is £20 and I passed up the half price offer in Waterstones on Saturday).
In Shanklin, the first stop was the sweet shop ( fudge and honeycomb) before we went to find a game of crazy golf and a game of bowling. Then tea at the pub next to the car park. For pudding we shared something called the volcano. It arrived with sparkling sparklers, and contained three flavones of ice cream, strawberries, chocolate brownie, whipped cream, marshmallows, chocolate biscuits and flakes.
We were not defeated!
On our way out of the car park we noticed a very nice green VW camper, and on closer inspection it turned out to be one of the Isle of Wight campers' fleet. Maybe next time!
Back home we've just watched the Italian Job (Jake enjoyed it very much but was a little frustrated by the ending!).
Off to bed now. We will wait and see what tomorrow's weather is like, and will decide what to do with our day over our cooked breakfast.