Douglas; Monday, 02 July, 2012

I only had part of the day to explore, so after checking out of the hotel I headed down to the centre of town and picked up the bus into Peel.

I had a wander around the town centre in a light drizzle, before heading to the town’s main museum the House of Manannan.

By the time I had looked around that the rain was starting to pick up a bit, but I thought I would have enough time before it really started raining to have a look around the castle.

Unfortunately, I only got about half way round before I was defeated by the rapidly deteriorating weather, so I headed back into town and decided to catch the bus north to Ramsey to do a bit of sightseeing from the warmth and dry of the top deck of a bus.

In Ramsey I was able to dash from the warmth and dryness of the Peel bus straight across the garage forecourt and into the equally dry Douglas bound bus, which then took off into the fog of the hills of northern Man.

By the time we arrived back in Douglas the rain had reduced to a small drizzle again so I was able to walk across town to the Manx museum. After the museum I wandered back down to the hotel to pick up my bags and head to the airport.

Originally, when I had booked the flight it was due to depart at 18:00, but over the intervening months the flight time had slowly been pushed back to 19:55, which turned out to be a problem as shortly after 19:00 a massive bank of fog descended on the island. The inbound plane was unable to land, turned round and temporarily landed at Blackpool to see if the fog would lift before deciding it wouldn’t and returning to Birmingham, leaving us passengers on the Isle of Man stranded.

In an incredibly smooth operation FlyBE took us all back through security, booked us onto the morning flight and then booked us into a nearby hotel.

So 30 minutes after I should have been checking into a hotel in Birmingham I was instead checking into another hotel on the Isle of Man for an extra night on the island.