So far, we'd walked two sections of the former Peel to Douglas railway line. Today we filled in a little more.

We parked in St Johns, headed a little way down the line towards Peel, and then branched briefly off onto another bit of the old Manx Northern Railway as far as Poortown:






We followed the road from Poortown into Peel. Mum and I used to walk out this way sometimes when I was little. Back then, I briefly had an interest in pressing wildflowers, and the hedges up here offered rich pickings (of blackberries, too, when the season was right).

Then down onto the promenade (the "front"), because you can't not...


Finally, after a lap of the harbour (where there were guillemots again, plump, red-footed, and quite adorable), we picked up the old railway line back to St Johns. (The beginning of this involved a little jiggery-pokery, as the opening stretch is closed for resurfacing, but a helpful local showed us how to get round this obstruction.)












This was a very nostalgic walk for me.

The River Neb track was one of my favourite places to take our Irish terrier, Paddy, when I was on dog-walking duty (it was not so much that I walked him, as that he -- untrained and headstrong -- hauled me).

And St Johns and its railway line really stand out in my early childhood memories. My mother and I would walk (if we had the energy) or bus (if we didn't) to St Johns green. There I would play with my red ball until it was time to go to the cafe for a white lemonade. And then -- highlight of highlights -- we would catch the train back to Peel. The only possible fly in the ointment was the occasional appearance of a diesel train in place of a proper train. I adored steam trains -- loved everything about them, from the sound of the chuffing engine and the clackety-clack wheels, to the billows of steam, to the smell of the clinker, and the need to mind out for smuts -- and any other kind of train was a major disappointment. In my memory -- accurate or not, who can say? -- we were mostly lucky, and these afternoons would mostly end in a big high of steamy satisfaction.

It must be hard for parents to predict what will create life-long memories in their offspring. We might well have done "bigger" things -- more sophisticated and rarer things -- and yet they don't have the same hold over my memory as a red ball, a bottle of white lemonade, and the sine qua non, a ride on a steam train...