Today was the last day of the current bus strike. But, as I write, things have not been settled, so we could well be in for more.

The weather was good, though, so we decided once again to take advantage of the bus-replacement steam train. And it turned out to be another excellent outing.

Recipe:

1. Take your skeleton-service bus to Ballasalla, and visit The Quirky Teapot Cafe (hint: They do really good ginger cake...).

2. Walk the Silverburn to Castletown, as we did last year:






3. Eat your beef-and-mustard sandwiches in Poulsom Park, while listening to the wind soughing in the trees to right and left:


4. Carry on into Castletown, where you can raid another charity shop, and do a bit of snapping:




5. Don't bother looking for the Knock Rushen Burial Mound, which probably dates back to the late 9th or early 10th centuries. Unless we completely missed something, it seems to be behind fencing, so all you see is this:


6. Console yourself by sitting on a bench in the sun for a while, looking out on the wide, wide sea:


7. Take the steam train (Maitland was our locomotive this time) back to Douglas:





8. Walk home the pretty way.

Such a nice day. Things are a struggle, one way and another, at the moment, and last week was one of those weeks when if it could go wrong, it did. So days out like these, with fresh air and exercise and nice things to see, are real life-savers.