Wednesday 22nd September 2021

After breakfast we boarded the coach to be taken to Douglas the Capital of Isle of Man to visit Tynwald the parliament building. This was scheduled for 10:30 and we were on time standing outside the building called “The Wedding Cake Building” and it does look like that. Our guide arrived and we were taken from a side entrance to the Manx Parliament. The guide was in fact a working officer of the Parliament and was very knowledgeable about the workings and gave us all the information about the parliament in a jolly and light-hearted manner. It was easy to listen to him and he managed some audience participation by assigning ‘offices & ‘titles’ to us who had occupied the key individual arm chairs in the front. I became for 5 minutes, in charge of all Banking on Isle of Man! This oldest parliament in the world for 1000 years was established by Norse settlers. We were told Tynwald consists of ‘Legislative Council’ and the ‘House of Keys’. I didn’t get a definitive answer to why called ‘House of Keys’ but one explanation was keys to unlock the laws. Compared to the House of Common and House of Lords in London the three chambers in Tynwald did not appear to be luxurious but were smartly decorated with framed pictures of past parliamentarians, comfortable seats and a carpet surrounded by a border of the three-legged ubiquitous emblem representing Isle of Man. The emblem I have since discovered is called “Manx Triskelion”. There is a motto with the three legs which says something like: “No matter what you do to me I shall stand”. We were taken to all three chambers and talked about the history and how the chambers work in affairs of the parliament. It was all very interesting, thanks to the good guide. Inevitably cameras were used and we ended up in the Souvenir Shop – inescapable tourist trap.

In the afternoon we travelled to Laxey (‘Salmon River’ in Old Norse). In the book about Isle of Man, “Laxey sprawls along the sides of a deep glen running down from mine workings in its upper reaches to the tiny harbour at the north end of a wide bay”. Woollen Mills have been at Laskey since 19th Century.

Prompted by Paul our coach driver some of us took a short walk to view the Great Laxey Wheel, an engineering feat created in the 18th century to help with pumping of water during mining of lead, copper, zinc and even silver. The gigantic wheel was a sight to behold it was enormous. I took many pictures which don’t do justice to the site. The Wheel is called Lady Isabella is 72 feet in diameter with 95 steps leading to the viewing platform giving what is, I am told a breath-taking sight. I didn’t go to the platform.

This afternoon we travel from Laxey on the unique Snaefell Mountain Railway. Snaefell is the highest point on the island and we will take the 5-mile ascending route on the train to get to the top of the mountain. This train journey was a treat indeed for it gave us some breath-taking views of the valleys and surrounding hills. What surprised me that there were sheep dotted on these lower hills. How did they get there and how do these find their way back home? There was a café at the top and guess what, everyone wanted some hot drink for it was very breezy and felt cold. Thankfully there was no rain although it was cloudy. After about half hour it was time to board the train for our journey back to Laxey which gave us yet another feast of beautiful hilly views and the Lady Isabella from the distance. More clicking of cameras or should I say mobile phones! The coach was waiting for us and soon we were on our way to Ramsey to our hotel reaching at 17:00 hours. It was a fulfilling day out. However, before dinner we had a surprise waiting for us for, we were asked to freshen up and get to the dining room before 6pm for there will be a speaker to tell us about prisons in UK before dinner. Folks obtained their favourite tipple and settled down in the lounge all ears for the speaker. The speaker was a retired HM Prison Governor called Brendon O’Friel a resident of Isle of Man. We understood that Mr O’Friel was going to talk to us about H M Strangeways Prison in England where apparently, he was involved or stationed at the Prison. He was a good speaker and had a captive (pardon the pun) audience in all of us, waiting to hear about the HM Strangeways Prison, which in the past had had certain amount of notoriety with riots. Mr O’Friel told us all about the ills faced by the Prison System in UK and that he had thought through the solutions to overcome the immense problems and that he had written a book which will reveal all. Like almost a conjurer he placed a box on the table, brought out a few volumes of his book and urged us to buy the book and read it to learn all about the prison system and how to cure it of its serious problems. Some of us went ahead and purchased the book called “Prison Governor’s Journal”. The talk over, dinner was announced, and we all ambled to our favourite tables to enjoy the awaited 3 course dinner intermingled with conversation about the day and inevitably the Prison Governor’s Journal