I hadn’t actually been planning on reviewing my journey back to London from Portsmouth, however the discovery of a class 444 waiting for me and improved customer service compared to my trip down was enough to differentiate it from the southbound journey (read about that here) and make it worth a short review.
The Island line, the one small remaining part of the Isle of Wight’s once extensive network 55.5 miles of railways, is just 8.5 miles in length and has a total of 8 stations spread across its length, mostly centred on the north-eastern and eastern conurbations of Ryde and Sandown & Shanklin.
The Isle of Wight is the 12th largest island in the British Isles and sits off the south coast of Great Britain close to Southampton and Portsmouth. Isolated from the mainland and with no bridge or tunnel connection, there are six ferry links to connect the island with its neighbouring towns and cities. Three of these are standard vehicle ferries that connect Yarmouth, East Cowes and Fishbourne with Lymington, Southampton and Portsmouth respectively, however the other three are slightly more exciting.
Departing Peterborough just after 6am, the second Saturday in December had brought an early start to allow a full day of exploring and adventuring. The Isle of Wight was my ultimate destination, but first I had two trains and two tubes to catch, as well as making my way across to the Island from Portsmouth.
Following on from the couple of posts last year on 5 places I’d like to visit in the UK and 5 places I’d like to visit in Europe, we come to the next continent in my bucket list of destinations, North America. For the sake of clarity and to avoid any arguments, ‘North America’ in this sense is as the UN recognises it, the continent comprised of Northern America, Central American and The Caribbean.
Less than 12 hours after arriving back from Aberdeen, I was back at Inverness station to begin my journey home. As I mentioned in my post about the sleeper (read that here) there are just two direct London to Inverness services each day, with the sleeper making up one of these. The other pair of services are LNER’s ‘Highland Chieftain’ which leave Inverness and King’s Cross at 0755 and 1200 respectively, arriving at their destinations just under 8 hours later.
Flights & Times 