So farewell, then, Manx TT.....until next year, anyway!

Lousy weather for the end of the biker-fest aka the Manx TT. Another Saturday ruined by delayed racing held over from Friday; the start of the Senior TT, the big boys who do 200 mph going past our local pub, was progressively put off from 1.30 p.m. to late afternoon and then cancelled, so  we couldn’t get out all day, even though nothing was happening. That’s the penalty of living inside the circuit.

Results so far: 53 accidents, 5 fatal, 9 serious. Plus 11,000 bikes - one for every 100yards of tarmac on the entire island.

The rain has been torrential You can imagine what it did to the many camp sites that spring up all over the island during the 2 weeks of the TT.

Some were completely flushed out and there was a desperate appeal on the radio for people with spare beds to take in refugees.

Would you take in a complete stranger, a hairy biker from Bavaria, some smelly, bearded hell’s angel who has been sleeping in his leathers against the cold and wet for the past week .

No neither would I!

And yet the radio station were so swamped with offers that they had to issue another urgent appeal; this time, to stop calling. There are a lot of very kind and decent people out there. We don’t hear much about them.

The people of this island are – well – insular. They tend to be quite reserved and rather difficult to get to know. But if you, as a come-over, make the effort to break the ice you get immediate smiles.

One of the very largest activities here is charitable work.

They personify ‘salt of the earth’.