You’ll never get a motorhome over there this year, unless you’re able to get it across privately. You’ll probably struggle for next year too. Have you thought about trying to get foot passenger tickets and staying in Douglas? Dogs are fine as long as they’re on the lead and they don’t mind loud noise and commotion.
You could of course be intrepid like the Scots bloke who jetski'ed over during Covid sans the mobile shed shaped object......... My old landlord used to go in a light aircraft if all else failed him, he'd pretty much go as often as he could with large sums of cash in his panniers to deposit in a bank on the IoM which he lost when the bank busted.
I agree, I've managed to do this twice, just taken foot passenger tickets at the last minute and sorted accommodation on arrival. It does make for an adventure
I mentioned on another thread, the day they released next years dates the other week all bike spots on the ferry’s were gone by lunchtime unless you wanted to sail at like 3am. God knows how quickly they went for motorhomes.
All of this is why I'm thinking of doing the Classic TT in August some time in the next few years. I've not been to the actual TT for many years as it's too busy and you have to commit so far in advance. I hear the Classic is busy, but not quite as bad in terms of advance booking.
I could try to adapt the Supersonic Shed on Wheels to amphibious use, like something from the Golden Age of Top Gear
You could do, would you smack it up on YouTube if/when you do. You could enquire at Dover about....well lets not go there eh
Tbh, that’s my standard operating procedure anyway. For example, when we went to the Nurburgring in 2018, it was planned thusly. One Thursday Wednesday afternoon in the Easter holidays my sons and I were watching ‘Ring crash videos on YouTube, kind of bored and restless, so I just announced, “Right, boys. Grab your shit and put it in the car because we’re leaving for Dover in 20 minutes.” I didn’t book anything in advance. We just pitched up at ferry terminal and once we arrived in Calais that night we stopped at the first hotel we came across. Then we did the same the next day when we arrived at the Ring and the same on the way back, stopping for a night in Brussels en route. It turned out to be a 1,000 mile round trip for a single solitary lap because my 911’s brakes caught fire, but while I was waiting for them to cool down before going out again, a biker binned it so they closed the track and then there was an endurance race on over the weekend. It was still one of the best holidays we ever had though. Edit: as I did my Ring lap on a Friday we must have left on the Wednesday, not Thursday.
You can’t even pay on the gate at Silverstone when it’s barely a tenth full these days, yet alone get one of Willy wonkas golden TT ferry tickets last minute lol.
The death of spontaneity. It’s becoming increasingly impossible to do anything without booking it in advance, handing over masses of personal data and then, when you finally get there and have been scanned and searched, being ordered around by some minimum wage martinet in a hi-viz jacket.
I used to pay on the gate at Donny in the 90’s, well when I say pay not quite because the people who collected the money were mostly drawn from banks or at least they were at Donny and I knew the young lady who collected the money along with her colleagues and she would just put the headlight sticker on me bike and in I’d go. The TT has ever been thus though as so far demand has exceeded supply. However you really don’t see so many motorcycles heading North these days as used to be the case.
Yep £55 for a weekend ticket camping round the back of craner curves I miss those days of paper tickets and being able to travel freely (or certainly free’er than we are now!).
MotoGP was much better at Donny than the sterile Silverstone. I haven't been there for years, since that time when it was rained off. Not so much because of that, but the utterly cuntish way the organisers dealt with ticket refunds where their default approach was to treat you as if you were trying to defraud them. That debacle actually led to another totally spontaneous holiday with next to no planning as a couple of weeks later I decided to take the boys to Misano as a consolation. The only thing which marred the trip was that one night I laughed so hard about almost getting into a fight with a homeless man on the beach at Rimini after accidentally stealing his bike (long story), that I triggered a bout of cluster headaches. I'd forgotten to pack my meds, so I had a horrible night and then an even worse next day driving around in oppressive heat with what felt like a nuclear war going off in my head while trying to find a pharmacy that sold sumatriptan OTC.
Haha we’ve all been there etc. I loved Donny cos you could see a lot of the lap from craners and it was a relatively short slap to the campsite afterwards. It felt so much more up close and personal too. Standing on starkeys bridge etc.. Yes it was shit getting in and out and yes the toilets were like a war zone but I’d go back there tomorrow if we could. Careful what you wish for part 15,726 etc..
To the OP…. Have you considered flying from London City to Ronaldsway in Castletown? Not sure what you’d do about dog travel, never needed to do it As others have said, about a year too late to book, heard that van bookings for next year are sold out (returning after racing finishes, rather than midway through as i usually do) tbh, with the amount of rescheduling going on due to weather, I’d be tempted to give it a miss. You may end up seeing sweet FA. I’ve certainly seen the least amount of running so far this year (although the organisers and Chief Gary have done a superb job of doing whatever they can within the realms of road closure times)
