Oh Man! What a great place!

By KEVIN JONES

A love affair with the Isle of Man was born 20 years ago when a bleary-eyed young man stepped out of a tent to find himself in what looked like a scene from Woodstock.

Tents, mud, bodies everywhere, rock music slicing through the early morning mist.

Where the hell did they all come from? There weren't all there four hours ago!

Here's a quick rewind for you.

In the summer of 1980, I managed to get away camping every weekend for four months straight. Brilliant! Single. Free.

On this particular weekend, my mates and I had planned nothing and were sitting, bored, in a Merseyside pub on a drab Friday night in early summer.

As we castigated ourselves for not being sufficiently well-organised to get away, someone at an adjoining table said that the Isle of Man TT Races were just starting and that special ferries would be leaving Liverpool's Pier Head every three or four hours through the night.

That was enough for us. We drank up, legged it home and were on the boat by midnight.

We arrived at Douglas, the island's capital, at 4am in pitch darkness and drizzle with hangovers already kicking in.

We collared a taxi driver who told us that there were people camping for the weekend at a farm outside town.

We piled in, found the paddock, saw a couple of tents in the gloom, found a spot and set up camp before we got too soaked.

Three hours' sleep was all we could manage before the Woodstock-style early morning chorus, and a gob-smacking sea of humanity, confronted us.

Now, I am no mad biker. I used to ride a motorbike but I was never a real enthusiast and I certainly wasn't big on bike racing.

But I challenge anyone not to be swept up by the atmosphere of the Isle of Man TT races, the craziest big-time bike-racing festival in the world.

Twenty years on, not much has changed.

Farm paddocks around Douglas still fill with bodies come TT time and, for the duration of the carnival, just about the whole island still becomes a harrowing death-trap of a racing circuit that, unfortunately, claims lives every year.

The fact that the TT circuit takes in a large portion of the island gives the first-timer to the land of the Manxman a really good look at the layout of the place and whets the appetite for a return journey.

Repeat visit after repeat visit gives the Isle of Man the chance to really get under your skin.

Apart from the stark, craggy beauty of the place, there is a wonderful versatility about the island, which sits slap-bang in the middle of the Irish Sea, almost equidistant from Northern Ireland, southern Scotland and the far north-west of England.

The island makes a lot of its tourism cash from short-term trippers of the low-rent, "kiss-me-quick"-hatted variety but has its exclusive, up-market side too. After all, the island, like the Channel Islands, is a tax haven for a strictly limited number of high rollers.

Its main calling card is not its bi-annual love affair with the motorbike (the Manx Grand Prix is also a major motorcycle moot) or even its lively pubs and vibrant nightlife. It is its rugged beauty, beautiful coastline and warm locals, who have become quite used to being invaded, ever since the Vikings did it in the first millennium AD.

The island is a wonderfully compact place, being only about 50 kilometres long and about 17 wide.

Most tourists make Douglas their base but it is so easy to get around the island, so you generally get to see the other main centres, such as Ramsey, Peel, Laxey (home of a famous and lovely water wheel, pictured right), Port St Mary, Port Erin and Castletown.

A wonderful way to spend a day is to take the scenic railway to the top of Snaefell, the island's tallest mountain (a very big hill, if the truth be told).

You can then walk down the mountain and along a pretty valley to Laxey, where you can check out the wheel and the river. Another great way to spend time is to visit one of the island's many glens, which are gentle and picturesque and provide a cool retreat on a warm summer's day.

The Isle of Man is reached either by air (the island's small airport is near Castletown in the island's south) or by ferry from Liverpool, Fleetwood and Heysham in England, from Dublin and Belfast, and from Ardrossan, Scotland.

With ancient history, scenic splendour, beautiful bays, coves and beaches and abundant nightlife, the Isle of Man's warm welcome awaits…

Links

Isle of Man Online
Golf Isle of Man
Peel Castle
Isle of Man Hotels