SiTTe-seeing On the Isle of Man: British Isles 2025, Part 3

Ok ok, so we made it on to the Isle of Man, it’s a quirky little trip we took, great – what exactly does one do when you’re visiting? The most / only famous thing that goes on is the “T.T.”, which they locally say means “Tourist Trophy” but apparently is a general abbreviation for “time trial” in motorcycle racing. Thanks to the beautiful scenery, the legal gray area that envelops the country, and a culture of no speed limits whatsoever, it has become a very popular stop on the motorcycle racing circuit. Popular, and deadly. The Wikipedia page for fatalities on the Isle of Man Mountain Course has 270 entries, for a race that’s been running for a little more than a hundred years. It’s not just entries from antiquity, either; there were 3 deaths in 2023 while 2024 had a single fatality. My brief perusal didn’t see many years that had none. Even when the race isn’t going on, you still see signs of the race. We know this, because we were nowhere near the time of the T.T. and we still saw plenty of barriers and signage.

Hang on, John; you weren’t there for the race so what did you do? It was a trip that didn’t look that much different from our other trips to the U.K., which I mean in a good way. We saw ancient sites and natural beauty and, occassionally, poked around town to see what was what. On the north end of the island we visited Maughold Church, which is a nice enough old chapel but, more interestingly, it houses a collection of tombstones within its graveyard that date back a thousand years and more, illuminating early “viking” influences on the island. (We’re not doing the “who is or isn’t a viking” debate on the Ramble; they’ve got Christian-looking gravestones with stories about Loki on them, that’s good enough for us.) Almost two dozen headstones were gathered under an awning, not-exactly preserved but at least kept out of the worst of the elements. Signs explained with brief summaries of what you might be able to pick out of the carvings if you looked closely enough.

We also toodled to one of our classic out-of-the-way spots where the road ends up barely one lane with no visibility around hairpin turns, tucked in amongst the rolling hills. In this case it was a double-dip of ancient and (relatively) modern attractions. First, the Ballafayle Cairn which was a nice specimen of its type. Granted like almost all of them it had long since been de-nuded, but the sense of scale was still lovely to see, and seeing it set high on the hillside, with views (on a clear day at least) of land in four different directions helps explain why it was probably a chosen site in the first place. That scenery also explains why there were two different viewpoints, named after residents of the island who would come and take stock of the world down through the years. The more prominent was “Charlie’s View”. Charlie being a landowner and a “Sir” of some sort or another, his memorial viewpoint sees regular upkeep, plus there’s statuary and a lovely little weather-break for hanging out there on a windy day (of which there are probably plenty).

And then there were the Bee Gees. (Sorry, the what now?) You heard me, the Bee Gees. Apparently the famously-Australian musical brothers were in fact not-so-famously Manx-born before the family crossed the equator at some point. We had no idea of this bit of trivia before we arrived, but as we walked along the promenade in Douglas one afternoon Lisa squints into the distance for a moment before asking “is that the Bee Gees??” The statue she was looking at was probably a hundred feet away, and facing away from us to boot, but it was hard to imagine who else it could possibly be. If you are familiar with the Bee Gees tune “Ellan Vannin” (for which you’d admittedly have to be a pretty big fan), you might like to know that it is based off a poem of “traditional” origin on the Isle of Man. Still, if you aren’t expecting the Bee Gees, and are suddenly faced with a life-sized, life-like bronze representation of them, it’s startling.

Hopefully the chill vibe of this post is coming across, because our time on the Isle of Man was indeed a chill time. Not in a boring way, but a truly relaxing one. We ate well, if not spectacularly. We touristed well, if not breathtakingly. We relaxed, enjoyed the cool weather, and generally idled in a pleasant state. On our final morning we rose early, dropped our car at the ferry terminal, and prepared to make our way to Dublin.