Why I hate the Isle of Wight....

As Sian wants us to share a few stories with you on her Storytelling Sunday's, I thought I would share the story of why I hate the Isle of Wight....

Many years ago when I was about 10 years of age I took a trip to the Isle of Wight with my school.  We had a fantastic week, visited lots of places but the thing that I enjoyed the most was finding our own fossils on the beach.

Fast forward 30 odd years and I am telling Nigel what a wonderful place the Isle of Wight (IOW) is and how I want to go fossil hunting like i did as a child with Robert, who was only a toddler.

We drive down to Portsmouth when the first of our bad luck happens....the car stopped and wont start.  We have a ferry to catch so we phoned the RAC who come out and take us to a garage.  They patch us up but say 'Try not to turn the engine off until you get to your destination'.  The sign as we head onto the ferry reads, 'Turn off your engine'....and we are first on so we are also the first off....great!

We do managed to get to our cottage on the IOW but the car isn't quite right so we take it to another garage where they have to keep it for three days.  'That's OK, we can use the bus, we are used to using the buses at home'.....we find out three days before we arrived the summer timetable swapped to the winter timetable....the buses are practically not existent out in the country.

But our cottage is nice, it looks out onto a field of cows, the cottage is very quaint, it has low ceilings and beams.........all the better to hear the mice (who apparently wear clogs in the IOW) scurry around all night.....I don't like mice.  One comes to welcome us by coming down the chimney one night.

Never mind, lets go to the beach, look at the fossilised dinosaur footprints.  The footpath has not been used for a looonnng time, we fight our way down to the beach, avoiding the brambles with bucket, spade, toddler and buggy.

The beach is lovely, the tide is in so no dinosaur footprints today.  let's take Robert for a paddle.  Good job we remembered his wellies as he won't touch the sand or sea with his bare feet.  Whoops!  That wave came in quick, it fills up Robert's wellies....he doesn't like this anymore.  He starts to cry so we fight our way back UP the footpath....with wellies, buggy, bucket, spade and crying toddler.

And that's why I don't like the Isle of Wight.

Awww! Look at Roberts little laughing face in the photo's above.  Got the old wellies on this time.  Looking for fishes in the rock pools......don't quite know what happened next but he just carried on walking.  Splash!  Maybe he thought he could walk on water.....he wasn't laughing after that. 

Guess what.....yep!  it was the same holiday:)

I really enjoyed making this layout....well I chuckled to myself while making it, thinking of Robert up to his waist in water.  However putting the layout together was a bit of a nightmare.  Everything just seemed to go wrong.  Finally when i had managed to put it together it was lacking something in the left hand corner.  I remembered some October Afternoon seaside cards I have been using recently, popped it on then layered a die cut scalloped circle with an 'R' for Robert over the top.  Now the layout is one of my favourites......funny how that happens sometimes:)