With direct flights out of Ronaldsway being lost or cut back, it can sometimes feel we’re increasingly cut off here in the Isle of Man.
But that is certainly not the case, as we discovered as we set off for a whirlwind weekend break to the New Forest and Dorset’s Jurassic Coast.
Flybe withdrew direct flights to Southampton in July, just two months after the three times a week service had been relaunched.
The airline had already announced it is pulling out of Gatwick from March next year, while franchise partner Loganair last month dropped its IoM to Edinburgh and Glasgow routes.
Flybe is looking to focus its regional operation on its Manchester hub and our South Coast sojourn provided an opportunity to see how practical that is.
It was an early start for us to check in for our 7.05am flight to Manchester. Some 40 minutes later we touched down at Manchester where we had a wait of less than an hour before our onward flight to Southampton. By just after 10am, we had picked up our hire car with Enterprise Rent-a-Car and were heading west towards Dorset.
First stop was Lulworth Cove, where, under blue skies and glorious sunshine, we set off from the giant visitors’ car park to join a steady stream of walkers on a section of the white chalk switchback that is the South West Coast Path.
A stiff one and a half mile up and down hike afforded dramatic clifftop views out to a shimmering azure sea with kestrels hovering alongside and the chalk grassland alive with polka dot-patterned moths and bright blue butterflies.
Our destination was Durdle Door, the spectacular natural limestone arch which is an iconic landmark of the Jurassic Coast.
It was created as a result of softer rocks being eroded behind a hard limestone cliff. Holes in the rock around the top of the arch are the remnants of a fossilised forest where cycad trees grew 147 million years ago.
It’s a popular spot for swimming, sunbathing or clambering across the rocks – in flagrant disregard of the signs warning people to keep off the dangerous cliffs.
It’s no empty warning, walkers have to be diverted around a large fenced-off section of the coastal path nearby that slipped into the sea in a huge landslide back in April.
Retracing our steps, we took a stroll around Lulworth Cove with a well-deserved honey and stem ginger West Country ice cream.
The cove itself is a perfect horseshoe-shaped bay created, in a similar fashion to Durdle Door, by the sea hollowing out the soft clays to reach the harder rock behind.
Close by is Stair Hole, an embryonic cove in the making which in a few thousand years will be as big as its neighbour.
Here the folded limestone strata known as the Lulworth Crumple, formed by the collision of two continental plates about 30 million years ago, have been documented in countless school geology text books.
Feeling peckish but conscious of the time, we headed off again, stopping off at Corfe Castle where we tucked into a delicious Dorset cream tea in the Model Village tea room.
Having negotiated the rush hour traffic around Bournemouth, we arrived at journey’s end for the day, elegant and well-heeled Christchurch.
Our base, sadly for the one night only, was the 4 star Art Deco-styled Captain’s Club Hotel located right on the banks of the sedate River Stour.
Specially designed to take advantage of its setting, each of the hotel’s 29 bedrooms boasts a river view. Our air conditioned room was cool and comfortable, and luxuriously furnished.
Before dinner we had time to amble along the river bank at Christchurch and explore a little of the town which has been dominated by the Priory Church for more than 900 years.
We passed the beautiful green known as the Quomps, the perfect spot to soak up the sun on what was the hottest day of the year, and explored the nearby ruins of Christchurch’s Norman Castle and the delightfully restored Anglo-Saxon watermill Place Mill.
Back at the Captain’s Club, we enjoyed a fabulous meal in the Tides restuarant overlooking the riverside terrace. Service was friendly and attentive, the food first class and the Churned God cocktails ordered from the piano bar next door truly top notch.
Following breakfast, we had an appointment to keep the next morning at Norley Farm outside Lymington on the Hampshire side of the New Forest.
Here retired vet Annie Pollock devotes her time to looking after scores of giant Baudet du Poitou donkeys as well as miniature donkeys, rare breed cattle, alpacas, pigs and ponies.
With their astonishingly shaggy coats and massive ears, Baudet du Poitou are one of the oldest breeds of donkey and were once the backbone of French agriculture, used to breed giant mules. But there are now fewer than 800 in the world and it’s Annie’s aim to bring them back from the brink of extinction, Norley Farm being the only stud for these giants donkeys in the UK.
We headed off through the New Forest to Brockenhurst, taking pictures of the native ponies – including one that appeared to be waiting at a bus stop.
These animals roam freely but are not wild in the true sense as they are owned by the Commoners. There are curently around 300 Commoners who have the right to graze livestock in the open forest, a traditional right dating back to Medieval times.
Large swathes of the New Forest national park are not woodland at all but heath. The term ‘forest’ originally meant hunting ground - William the Conqueror having created the New Forest in 1079 as his giant royal pleasure park for the pursuit of deer and wild boar.
Next stop was the Tall Trees Trail at Blackwater where we wandered among towering Douglas Firs and California Redwoods planted in the late 1850s to create the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive. Here signboards point out the superlatives of the arboreal world – the tallest tree and the heaviest tree.
Back in Christchurch, we found the town heaving with trippers and with all the car parks full, we set off for Hengistbury Head, a heath and dune covered headland jutting out into the English Channel with views across to the Isle of Wight on one side and to Christchurch harbour on the other.
A land train trundles up to the head but we chose instead to walk on the path through the dunes which are peppered with archaeological remains, passing Iron Age earthworks known as the Double Dykes and the site of a Stone Age settlement on Warren Hill.
The headland ends at a narrow sandbank known as Mudeford Spit famed for its string of beach huts that command astonishing prices - one was on sale during our time there for £160,000, a price per square foot making it among some of the most expensive properties in Britain. A brisk walk back to the car and we were off again, back to Southampton airport to drop off our hire car and catch the 6.45pm flight to Manchester, landing back at Ronaldsway at 9.10pm.
That’s less than two and half hours to get back home - certainly proof that a weekend break to Dorset and New Forest is possible even with the demise of direct flights to Southampton, although of course a longer stay would always be preferable.