Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde Pier Head – Wightlink Catamaran

A bit of a shorter post for the final one of the year, partly due to struggling to find time to write in a packed December schedule and partly as I’m sure you’ll all be busy with the festivities so won’t have much time to read my musings. Nonetheless, the show must go on and so this post is all about my journey onboard Wightlink back in August, as I travelled from Portsmouth Harbour across the Solent to Ryde Pier Head on (well just off) the Isle of Wight.

The last time I went to the Isle of Wight, back in late 2020, things were very different. The class 483s, former 1938 Tube Stock, were still in operation on the Island Line and we were still in the tail end of the Covid pandemic with social distancing and other restrictions being implemented and removed every five minutes. Back then I compared Wightlink and Hovertravel in one blog post (read that here), but on this occasion, they’re getting a post each and, in the interests of fairness, I’ve also got each operator in the opposite direction to last time.

I arrived at Portsmouth Harbour on a service from Chichester around 40 minutes before the hourly ferry service was due to depart. Whilst this was quite a long wait for me, the ferry departures do generally link quite well with the hourly fast service to and from London Waterloo and, with the ferries formerly operated by British Rail, you can still buy ‘Rail and Sail’ tickets through to the Isle of Wight. During peak times the ferry service does increase to half hourly, this usually being roughly 1000-1800 on summer weekends.

Access to the Wightlink ferry terminal is really easy from Portsmouth Harbour station, with a direct ramp down from the buffer stops end of the platforms to the ferry terminal, allowing really short connections between trains and ferries. I headed straight down and it was literally 30 seconds from the train to the ferry terminal, although I did then find the Wightlink Café closed and so headed straight back up the ramp to the Pumpkin Café on Platform 1. Typically, just after I got back with my breakfast, the Wightlink Café opened, although it didn’t look to have quite the same range as the station café.

The ship for my ‘voyage’ across the Solent was Wight Ryder II, which arrived on its previous journey from Ryde around 10-15 minutes before we were due to depart. Boarding started at 0907 and, being blessed with glorious weather on the August Bank Holiday Sunday, I headed up to the sun deck which is accessed by steps at the rear of the main passenger cabin. Up here I was also able to hear as the shore staff shouted to the crew that we had 104 passengers onboard, less than half of the catamaran’s 260 passenger capacity.

As we put out from the quay at 0916, one minute late, I was able to see across Portsmouth Harbour and caught a glimpse of both of the Royal Navy’s ‘Queen Elizabeth’ class aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Price of Wales. I also saw two other ferry services that call Portsmouth home, the Gosport Ferry, which makes the short journey across the harbour entrance to the town of Gosport, and the Wightlink Portsmouth to Fishbourne car ferry, one of the other two Wightlink connections between the mainland and island, with the Lymington to Yarmouth connection being the third and final one.

As we headed towards the Isle of Wight, we were treated to some excellent views back across the Solent of Portsmouth, Gosport and the surrounding area, with the Spinnaker Tower providing a good reference point for the scenery. We also passed one of Hovertravel’s Hovercraft on its way from Ryde to Southsea, a journey I would be making on my way back in a few hours’ time. The sailing from Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde Pier Head is scheduled to take just 22 minutes and, having berthed at the pier, we began disembarking at 0935, right on time.

Ryde Pier is the world’s oldest seaside leisure pier and was primarily for the same use as I had just undertaken, arriving to the island by ferry. With Ryde’s seafront surrounded by mud flats, before the pier’s opening in 1814 visitors from the mainland had to come ashore “ashore on the back of a porter and then, depending on the state of the tide, having to walk as far as half a mile across wet sand before reaching the town”. A tramway didn’t reach the pier head until 50 years later and the island’s railway finally extended from the esplanade in 1880, a connection that still exists today.

The journey from Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde Pier Head was short and sweet, with an extremely easy connection to the railway at both ends of the journey. Realistically, the Wightlink connection is probably the best for most visitors to the island, with there being a bit more space and better connectivity. All the Wightlink staff that I came across, from the terminal staff to the ship’s crew were friendly, helpful and willing to answer any questions. Overall, a pretty good journey and a pleasant experience.