Autumn Holiday Part Three - Beaches, Ice Cream & Mini Golf!

 My last full day on the island was a busy but enjoyable one, and it started with a lovely walk along the beach at Shanklin. Again, it was very quiet with very few people there, so having the beach to ourselves was a lovely experience!

No matter what the time of day, it's always the perfect time for ice cream, three scoops of heaven! The black vanilla flavour was particularly delicious! 

Mini golf is always fun, despite the fact I'm terrible at it, and the three of us decided to give the pirate course a try. It was a little cheesy, but there had been a lot of detail and work put into the course, including creating a pirate ship in the middle! 

It was more adventure golf than mini golf, and to my surprise, I still was crap at it! Never mind! 

This was one of the final holes. I had to get a hole in one, and James needed to miss seventeen times for me to win. Typically, he got a hole in two attempts, and I was destined yet again to lose at golf. But there's always next time, right? (Maybe I should do a Tonya Harding and beat him with the golf club before we start to even the field out a bit!) Pirates Cove Adventure Golf was £8 a person, and they also have a Jurassic World styled one next door if you prefer dinosaurs, or want to do both! I didn't fancy the humiliation of another loss, so we headed back out onto the beach.

Could this have been any more beautiful? It was warm, sunny and again, we were alone on the beach. It was like having our own private island, and I was enjoying it very much! I wish it could be like this everywhere!

After a relaxing beach walk, we headed to Godshill, where we grabbed a bite to eat, and I got to admire this part of the path with lucky horseshoes placed in it. Lucky for us, not so much for the horse's who had them nailed in their feet. 

Previously we had been to Babbacombe Model Village when we had been in Devon, and upon discovering that Godshill had its own model village, I was eager to pay it a visit. My first failure was expecting it to being similar to Babbacombe. In some ways it was, but Godshill Model Village lacked humour and drama with it's models. It seemed to be more of a faithful recreation of scenes, and at times it felt a little stifled. 

The model of the beach, which felt a little underwhelming.

The church, complete with a wedding event.

This was also an interesting choice, having a model of the R101. It was Britain's version of the Zeppelin, and was the largest built until the Hindenburg was built a few years later. Similarly to the Hindenburg, it crashed early on it's life in France, killing most of the people onboard. There didn't seem to be any reason or explanation as to why it was there, and the only thing that I could find in connection was that it flew once over the Isle of Wight during its testing phase.

Another view of the church, with some historic & thatched roof cottages in the foreground. Overall, I think this is one of those places that if you've done it once, you don't need to return. While the models were nicely built, and the gardens beautifully maintained, it was missing a spark and some humour, and we left feeling a little let down by it. Tickets start at £8.50 for adults, and when I think we spent half an hour there, compared to over an hour & a half at the adventure golf for the same amount of money, it's something that I'm not recommending unless you're wanting to visit all the model villages in the UK (apparently there is over 30!) If you are interested, you can find their website here @modelvillagegodshill.co.uk

To finish the day, we headed over to Seaview for a nice view of the sea, before grabbing some dinner and enjoying a drink in the pub there. Then it was back to where we were staying, I got everything packed up in the bag so James could bring it home for me tomorrow.

We got up early, and he dropped me off at the Red Jet terminal in Cowes, so I could get back in time for my interview. I almost missed the Jet, because I was too busy watching the birds walking about on the plastic roof and laughing at the funny noise it was making!

But I was back in Southampton and got back home, switched on my laptop to discover that our internet had gone down, and no matter what I did, I could not get it to work. I then had to call James, who forced some sort of reboot on the Wi-Fi, and it managed to work. Well, long enough to do the interview, before it went down again, and stayed down until he returned. 

The interview was not what I was expecting, it was a teams call, and there was another 5 or 6 candidates on the call, and we were tested on our spelling, typing and listening skills. I did notice I was the only one wearing a shirt and tie (and pyjama bottoms, but no one was going to see that). A couple of hours later I got an email to say I had passed, and another email would come through with a link to book a face to face interview with a Team Leader. So it felt like I was getting somewhere.

I'd been concerned about finding another job. I don't have any formal qualifications or accreditations, I'd started at my previous job when I was 17 as a christmas temp and worked my way up the ladder. I was nervous because I kept thinking "who would hire me?". On paper I've got nothing, but I do work hard. I guess I'd have to hope that would be what gets me through. I couldn't even say I was a world class blogger, I'd gotten so far behind with the blog I'd almost given up, and I'd better not mention that I'm behind, they might think I'm not an organised person. 

Which to be fair, would actually be true!