To the Isle of Bear, err, no, To The Isle of Man

Welcome back to the adventures of Scotland The Brave in the United Kingdom. Click these links for some places Scotty saw Stonehenge and Bath, Plymouth, Glastonbury, Lake Windermere , Gretna Green , Loch Lomond, Glencoe , the Isle of Skye , the Highlands, Edinburgh.)

HINT: CLICK on the images to make them bigger and with more details on your device.

Scotty returned to London, and planned his visit to Isle of Man. He consulted his trusty maps. The Isle is in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland and Scotland and Wales. You can take a train from London to Liverpool and from there you can board a ferry that is run by the romantically named ‘Isle of Man Steam Packet Company’. Apparently, the ‘packets’ are no longer driven by steam, though.

But Scotty decided to fly. This is how you do it. You take a scary car ride through central London traffic to London City Airport which lies by the mighty Thames River. Then you thread your way through the most crowded airport you have ever seen in your life and board a worryingly small plane.

The small plane flies right over most of England and if you are lucky you can see the fields and rolling hills down there between the clouds. Ancient countries and kingdoms slide away beneath your wings.

Depending on the century you are in, you are gliding over Gewisse, South Anglia, Middle Saxony, Powys, Mercia, Rheged and Northumbria. These days, of course, the route is over England and a little patch of Wales. Then your plane soars over the Irish Sea, which used to be criss-crossed by the Irish and Viking raiders of the Welsh coast. So much history to look down on in a flight of just one and a quarter hours.

From Castletown airport Scotty and the Guardians travelled to Douglas town by taxi. The friendly driver proudly told them that this year no-one had died in the annual Isle of Man Tourist Trophy motorcycle races. ‘You mean, people die?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ (More on the TT races later.) He seemed to be emulating the spirit of the races as hurtled toward the stone walls, hedges and trees lining the roads, but he adroitly missed them all and also missed the oncoming cars that were visible only at the last minute.

The Isle has two speed limits: Forty miles per hour and Flat Out. Forty miles an hour doesn’t sound fast until you are bouncing and shaking down narrow winding roads with little visibility ahead and often with stone walls closing in ominously on either side.

In between hedgerows and woods, they were able to see the countryside of Isle of Man, and it is just lovely. We’ll show you more pictures later.

They arrived, unscathed, at Douglas, which features Victorian buildings arcing around the bay. More in the next post.

Fun Manx Facts: The Isle of Man stretches 53 km north to south and is 22 km across, an area of 570 square km. There are 84,000 Manx people with their own own currency and own laws. Their Parliament dates from Viking times and is the oldest continuous one in the UK and possibly in the world.

Perth: Scotty hails from the city of Perth in Western Australia. Greater Perth has the dubious privilege of being among the 4 longest cities in the world, stretching over 120km north to south (twice as long as the whole Isle of Man) and around 30 to 40 km inland from the Indian Ocean to the hills, an area of over 6,000 sq km.

So you see that the Isle of Man could fit inside Greater Perth several times over. Yet it seems larger. It’s a whole little world unto itself, with sea-side towns and ports and beaches and spectacular cliffs and forests and mountains. And, of course, it has a fascinating history.

Next Episodes: we will see Douglas and Peel and villages and the spectacular Rushen Castle. We also traveled much of route of the TT races – but not at 160 km/hour.

BOOKS with Scotland in them (our Scotty, that is)

Scotty is the star of a very special book called When A Brave Bear Fights Cancer: A Get Well Soon Gift by Carola Schmidt. In the book, Scotty a little bear who gets a bad sickness called cancer. The book is to help kids feel much more brave when they are getting treatment. Available in paperback and Kindle. Look for the brave little bear on the cover.

Scotty in books by Mawson

You can also see Scotty in all the books by Mawson. One is called It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In (in that one he delivers the post) and another is She Ran Away From Love (he delivers the post again.) In Dreamy Days and Random Naps you can see him being a king and also a superb guitarist. Don’t miss that one! You can find Mawson’s books on this Link here, and on his Writer-Bear Page on Amazon.This is what the books look like:

You have wandered into Mawson Bear’s web-den. Mawson is the Writer-Bear of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In  and Dreamy Days and Random Naps and She Ran Away From Love. Mawson’s Guardian is co-creator of When A Brave Bear Fights Cancer, by Carola Schmidt