Isle of Man

What and where is the Isle of Man?

For those who aren’t familiar with the Isle of Man, it is a small island in the Irish Sea that sits between Scotland (to its north), England (to its east), Wales (to its south) and Northern Ireland (to its west). It is within the British Isles, but is not part of the United Kingdom. It is a self-governing British Crown Dependency with its own parliament, government and laws, but it uses GBP £ currency and the British Monarch is its head of state.

Why visit?

We chose to visit the Isle because my great, great grandfather was born there and in fact we can trace back to my 6x great grandfather who was born there in January 1718! It was also an opportunity to visit my parents on our way there and back, as they live on the Wirral not too far from Liverpool where we caught the ferry.

Our itinerary

I’m going to share our itinerary I mapped out for us because I planned it to see as many of the heritage places as possible to maximise our £40 (each) visitor passes. The passes last 14 days although we were only initially booked for 7 nights. We visited at the end of September/early October, after the school holidays but everything was still open.

Day 1 (Saturday 27th Sept)

We had breakfast with friends near my parents’ home, drove to Liverpool and visited Albert Dock and visited The Beatles Story Museum and had a late lunch. We then headed to the ferry terminal. It was very cold inside the ferry and it was a bit choppy so I felt a bit queasy after an hour. Finally we arrived late evening and made our way straight to our cottage and went to bed. Our cottage was Shee dy Vea in Port Erin.

Day 2 (Sunday 28th)

We walked to the Whistle Stop Cafe for a cooked breakfast. When we got back it was nice enough to sit on the front porch and have tea and cake.

Cregneash was our first of the Manx National Heritage attractions (and where we bought our passes). Cregneash is a picturesque village with thatched cottages, a blacksmith, some houses you can look around and we chatted to a spinner and weaver in one of them who showed us some Manx Loaghtan wool. (For those who don’t know I am also a spinner and have spun this fibre too.)

We then drove to The Sound Cafe which looks out to the Calf of Man (a small rocky island).

From the cottage there’s a track down to the waterfront where we had pizza from Byron’s.

Day 3 (Monday 29th) – Castletown area

At 9.30am, when it opened, we toured Castle Rushen, one of the best preserved medieval castles in the British Isles, built around 1200AD for a Norse King.

We then went for a hot drink at a local cafe before heading to the Nautical Museum. The museum tells the tail of a Manx Captain and his boat, the Peggy. Unfortunately Peggy is off elsewhere being restored (available separately to visit) but it’s one of the world’s oldest wooden boats and the earliest armed yacht in the British Isles.

There’s a statue of a great heron in the village.

On our way to our next heritage site we stopped at Malew Churchyard to see if we could find any of my great grandparents’ graves…we couldn’t. So, we headed to Rushen Abbey, founded in 1134 by King Olaf (Olaf I Guðrøðarson) for monks of the Savignac Order.

After that a drive to Langness Peninsula where we had cream tea (tea and scones, cream and jam) at the golf clubhouse, a walk near there and another nearer the herring tower.

Day 4 (Tuesday 30th) – Peel area

After breakfast in the cottage we headed to Knockaloe Centre for WW1 Internment. (This was free to enter and not part of the heritage pass, highly recommend and there’s a donation box). This was unexpectedly really interesting. Joseph Pilates was an internee there and saw the Manx cats through the wire fences doing stretches and that’s what gave him the idea of the stretching exercises that he then developed into Pilates now practiced around the world. Pictures of him practicing it with the other internees can be seen there. Very interesting and sad to read all the signs there and see the lovely items the internees made with bits of wood, bone and cloth.

We then went to the House of Manannan. Manannan is a mythical sea god, who takes you through the history of the Isle of Man from the Celts, Vikings and through its maritime history (via videos and displays in multiple rooms over two floors). Well worth a visit. We had cake and a drink break between touring the floors.

Next was Peel Castle which are the remains of a medieval fortress on St Patrick’s Isle. This is all outdoors but has little headsets you can press numbers at the different locations and hear more about the different parts and its history. We had dinner at Creek Inn and ice cream from Davison Ice Cream Parlour then back to the cottage exhausted.

Day 5 (Wednesday 1st Oct) – Ramsey area

After a cooked breakfast at Cafe Red in Port Erin, we headed to Milntown House and Gardens (paid separately as not part of the heritage pass). The guided tours had finished for the season, but you can do self guided instead.

Grove Museum was next and we saw some more Manx Loaghtan sheep. A well preserved but a bit cluttered Victorian house…originally a holiday home for a rich Victorian merchant! We went into Ramsey town centre and had cake in Brunch.

Back in the car we headed to Ayres Nature Reserve and stopped at the northern most tip of the Isle of Man.

We went back to Ramsey for gelato and sorbet at Gelatory.

Ramsey was our least favourite of the towns we stopped in.

Day 6 (Thursday 2nd) – Laxey & Douglas areas

Storm Amy was forecast and we got warning our ferry on Saturday may be cancelled, by the end of the day they confirmed it was cancelled.

After breakfast in the cottage we drove to Laxey to see The Great Laxey Wheel. This is the largest working water wheel in the world! It’s over 72 feet tall and we climbed it! The wheel is/was used to pump water out of the mines. There is no coal on the Isle of Man, they mined mostly lead and zinc. My husband went into the mine but I skipped it. There were a lot of steps and hills walking the area and my legs were like jelly by the time we got into the car. In the village we went to the weaving mill, had lunch and then headed to Douglas (the capital of IOM).

We went into the Manx Museum which is free and my husband had a look around whilst I went into their archive and ancestry room where they set me up on a laptop to access birth and census records of my ancestors. We had a little walk around the shops and stopped for cake and hot chocolate. For dinner we walked back down from our cottage to Byron’s for pizza again 😋.

Day 7 (Friday 3rd) – Douglas and brewery hunting

We had no real plan for the day, since we had managed to squeeze in the Manx Museum the day before. We had a cooked breakfast at The Sound Cafe and then went searching for all these breweries that I had flagged on google maps as being on the island. It turned out that every one of them didn’t have a visitor experience or tour! In fact they didn’t even have on-site shops! What a contrast to Scottish small craft ale breweries. We played some games back in the cottage in the evening and went for dinner at Sam’s Smoky BBQ in Castletown. We shared the most delicious dessert, definitely would be in my top 5 ever. It was called Lemon Meringue Sundae (Vanilla Ice Cream, Lemon Curd but thick and firm, Shortbread with Smoked Coal Meringue) oh my it was so good. We even considered going back the next day just for dessert!

Day 8 (Saturday 4th) – Bonus extra sightseeing day!

If Storm Amy hadn’t cancelled our ferry we would have been up very early and on the ferry back to the mainland without seeing anything. As we had the extra day I had managed to book us onto the tour of the Old Grammar School and the House of Keys. These were two heritage pass sites we would have missed otherwise as tour times are very limited. We were the only people on the tour. It is supposed to also include the nautical museum but we had done that already. The school is the oldest roofed building left on the island (1200 AD). Our guide for the school spent most of the time on her phone chatting to someone, our guide at the house of keys was the total opposite. Very enthusiastic and interested in the site of where the original parliament for the island was and his talk about the corruption and power these people had and their secrets behind closed doors that helped them get rich and leave the islanders poor. Sound familiar!

We had a light lunch in a cafe and walked around Castletown and sat on the swinging benches.

We drove around Port Erin to the opposite side of the bay to where our cottage was. On the hill behind it we could see a billionaire’s mansion. They don’t pay income tax on the Isle of Man so he isn’t the only billionaire to live there!

Day 9 (Sunday 5th) – Douglas and back to the mainland

The Sunday sailing back was in the afternoon which gave us a few hours to get breakfast in Douglas and have a walk around. There’s a statue of the Bee Gees who were all born on the IOM.

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I know this has maybe been a bit long winded but I wanted to show what is possible to combined to the days as it may be useful for others planning to visit the Isle of Man. The Manx Heritage sites we visited would have cost us £128.50 per person if we didn’t have our £40 passes! Quite the saving and it really maximised our enjoyment and knowledge of the island of some of my great great grandparents.

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If you do visit you MUST, when you cross the Fairy Bridge, say “Hello fairies” or “Good morning/afternoon/evening fairies”. My mum had clearly had it said to her and she passed this on to us, so we observed the tradition…I mean who wants to tempt fate when you have to leave the island on a ferry!