Visiting the Isle of Wight for the day may seem like an unachievable trip but, if like me, you live within an hour’s drive of the nearest docks, you can easily jump on the ferry, hovercraft or catamaran and be on the beautiful within 60 minutes. Your choice of transport will all depend on what activities you intend on getting up to when over on the island. If you want to be on the island in 10 minutes you can do so via the hovercraft from Southsea to Ryde. You can be on there in 22 minutes via a catamaran from Portsmouth to Ryde or 25 minutes from Southampton West Cowes. With both of these options, you won’t have your own mode of transport once on the Isle of Wight but there are bus services which can take you to the landmarks of your choice and the open top is a lovely way to take it all in on a summer’s day. We chose to take 1 car for 5 of us so opted for the ferry service from Southampton to East Cowes which takes 55-60 minutes. We booked online the night before (it was a last-minute, spontaneous decision), we selected our times for departure and printed out our ticket; all very easy and quick to do. On arrival, you simply show your printout and wait in your car until instructed to drive straight on. We paid extra for priority tickets, meaning we drove on and off first so there was no waiting around and no wasted time.
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