The route today was to initially include a short cross-country section, walking parallel to the road, until I reached the top of Hayling Island. Rather than walk round the whole island, which would have been a lot longer than I had time for, I intended to go down the western edge to the bottom of Langstone Harbour where I was to catch the pedestrian ferry over to Portsea, just above Fort Cumberland and from there in to Portsmouth. However, the plans of mice & men aye gan Agly!
The rain looked settled in, so I did just the same, removing the waterproofs and making myself comfortable, hoping to see off the rain. Over an hour and a half and one fine lunch later, there had been no change and the rain continued to pelt it down and it didn't look like it would stop any time soon. With quite a walk still in front of me I had no option but to pull on the waterproofs and venture out. Once you are wet, you cannot get any wetter.
The last thing I had done before leaving the camp site in the morning had been to use the camp wi-fi to check out ferry times and knew I was in good time to catch it before service finished for the day. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the terminal everything was closed up. Inquiring at the harbour master's yard I was informed that the ferry had been removed from service the week before for urgent maintenance. There was absolutely no indication of this on the ferry website and nothing at the ferry terminal to indicate this. So, there I was at the end of an island having walked for hours in the rain and no ferry.
By now the harbour staff had gone home. Standing at the ferry terminal on a dreich Saturday night with no idea what local services were available, I wondered how on earth I was going to do this. And that was when the Angel appeared. The first thing I had done when I knew the ferry was off was to contact the young lady who was to be my Airbnb hostess over the next couple of days, to explain that I would be late getting in but that I had no idea when that would be or how I would get there. Within minutes of being informed of my predicament, my mobile phone started to buzz with information on the various options in front of me. Not only the options in terms of mode of transport but detailed timetables and information of the links between them. It would have been easy to have writtenback saying 'ok', but Looloo is not made like that.
Bad day! What bad day?