BMW R1200RT/R1250RT Forum

Steve398 wrote: Thu Mar 26, 2026 8:44 pm It’s the most expensive crossing per mile in the world. There have been numerous complaints over the cost since I was a kid, but they’ve never lead anywhere.

£60 day return for me and a bike, Robbing beggars!

Costs more if you want to stay a week.
The IOW isn't the same as when i was a young lad. These days, a lot of places and shops have closed down. 3 years ago i went to a wedding in Bembridge. Decided to make a weekend of it. Apart from the countryside, which i love, the cheap cafes and those little shops you only get in villages have gone

When I was growing up on the Island the local Council would not allow any of the large or chain stores across. Visitors would love the Island for exactly the reasons you stated, and that in turn attracted retired professionals to move there.

However, ‘quaint’ on holiday is not the same as day-to-day Island life, and our new residents became bored so gravitated to hold positions in the local Council, and also missing the choice that the big stores on the mainland offered they began to allow them footholds.

So Tesco/Morrisons/Asda/Next/etc.,etc., sprouted up. Now it’s like Anytown, Anyplace, UK, and the quaint character of the Isle of Wight (note spelling Doc ) has gone, never to return… which is why I won’t move back.

Bike serviced & MOT'd in Synter BMW Shrewsbury today, all ready for a the summer

Trying to get a lot of things done as in 2 weeks I’m in hospital for a hernia op so won’t be doing much after for a while.

Panman40 wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 8:36 pm Trying to get a lot of things done as in 2 weeks I’m in hospital for a hernia op so won’t be doing much after for a while.

Hopefully everything goes smoothly with the op.

Panman40 wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 8:36 pm Trying to get a lot of things done as in 2 weeks I’m in hospital for a hernia op so won’t be doing much after for a while.

Get out and have a play on the bike before you go in!

The good thing is that it’s one more out of the way then Martin! Clean living and regular prayer has obviously paid benefits for you then…

burridge01 wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 1:15 pm How often do you go back Steve.I've not been back for over 10 years.

Very seldom TBH, it’s too expensive and changed too much. I loved the place that I left when I was 19 but everywhere’s built up now.

At last count I had over 100 of my family members living across there, the high majority of whom I wouldn’t know if I passed them in the street.

It amuses my wife that my accent returns the moment I set foot on the Island!

Steve398 wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 4:45 pm When I was growing up on the Island the local Council would not allow any of the large or chain stores across. Visitors would love the Island for exactly the reasons you stated, and that in turn attracted retired professionals to move there.

However, ‘quaint’ on holiday is not the same as day-to-day Island life, and our new residents became bored so gravitated to hold positions in the local Council, and also missing the choice that the big stores on the mainland offered they began to allow them footholds.

So Tesco/Morrisons/Asda/Next/etc.,etc., sprouted up. Now it’s like Anytown, Anyplace, UK, and the quaint character of the Isle of Wight (note spelling Doc ) has gone, never to return… which is why I won’t move back.

Same here is Selsey. Most of the holidaymakers think it would be great to live here. They forget what it's like in the winter months. You're not a local until you've lived here for 21 years plus.
We, too, have the retired professional types who move down here, get fed up and run the local council. I don't even know who they are. They can't see the whole picture, really, as they live in their snooty worlds. Don't get me wrong i learnt and worked for Oxford Uni for most of my life. I'm classed as a retired professional, but I've involved myself in the community. I came from a council estate background in South London. I speak with a common London accent.
There have been plans to add more facilities that the locals want, like a once a week food market by the sea front. This is a fishing village, and we don't even have a fishmonger in the high street. which would mean more jobs for locals( there are high numbers of unemployed youngsters in the village) and enjoyment for the communities, but as the council is all snobs, they won't allow it to go through. They say it will be too noisy and cause rubbish, but they have to remember we have the largest campsite in Europe on our doorstep that produces noise 10 months of the year.
I could go on forever about the subject.

Good luck. It's all pinhole surgery these days. My eldest had the Op and was back working the next week

Let's see how small this world is Doc,what council estate in South London did you live on.

I was wondering that, as I grew up on a council estate in Welling before the family moved to the countryside.

Doctor T wrote: Mon Mar 30, 2026 4:48 pm Good luck. It's all pinhole surgery these days. My eldest had the Op and was back working the next week

Thanks I was told it’ll be open surgery with another general anaesthetic and overnight stay, they also need to ‘ switch me off’ which complicates things and involves cardiology .

owl wrote: Mon Mar 30, 2026 7:02 pm I was wondering that, as I grew up on a council estate in Welling before the family moved to the countryside.

Welling,positively posh compared to my council estate Wouldn't have changed the time I grew up there. Was brilliant to be a kid in the 80's on a council estate

I had families of 2 uncles living in New Addington, and another in Addington, I started life living in an Ifield council house, then dad joined a self-build group in Crawley, 2 years after the house was built we moved to Cornwall in 1968.

I was a Council house kid too, born in ‘49 in a pre-fab council house in Oakfield, the rough part of the Island.Then moved a couple of years later to a new council house in Binstead, about 2 miles from Ryde, with the sea and a beach about a 10 min walk across a golf course, open countryside behind us with a farm and a stream. Hell it was!

A bit different for my wife, born in 1957 in Battersea slums off Battersea Park Rd until the age of 5. No electricity, gas lighting, no bathroom, and outside toilet. She tells me that she was a dab hand at putting a potato outside the rat hole and then killing them with a brick. Moved to a council flat in Putney in ‘62, thought she’d died and gone to heaven, open grassland near to the common, running hot water, electric lights, coal fires fuelled by nicked coal from Battersea Power Station where her Step-father worked as a crane driver.

Different worlds…