The delights of the Isle of Man – a little British island secret

Manxland for merriment and merriment! That’s a 1932 advertisement for the Steam Packet Company advertising the five fine ships that once carried holidaymakers to Manxland – the Isle of Man.

The poster is in the House of Manannan museum in the harbor village of Peel, on the west coast of Man. It’s the right place, because that slogan is long gone.

Cheerfulness and cheerfulness are out. Instead, the Isle of Man tourism folks have just unveiled a ‘Mindful Map’ of the island, with wild swims, walks and the like to provide ‘accessible wellness’.

Well, this is 2023. Even a short break for some fresh air should be therapy. I land at Ronaldsway airport, hop into a rental car and head out to boost my resilience and access a good dose of wellness.

The Isle of Man was left adrift in the Irish Sea when the ice caps melted some 8,000 years ago. It’s almost equidistant from the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English coasts – and different parts of the landscape will remind you of all four. With just over 84,000 inhabitants, there is room for everyone.

Twenty minutes later I’m eating a therapeutic bowl of soup and staring out the window of the Sound Cafe on the southwest tip of the island.

After lunch I walk to the cove where a family of seals bobs up and down. There’s really nothing like looking into the bright, dark eyes of a big, fat seal to improve your well-being.

Instead of staying in a seaside hotel, I choose a more contemplative spot inland five miles north of Castletown on the edge of the South Barrule Forest. Kerroobeg is a beautifully converted cottage with breathtaking views across rolling farmland to the Irish Sea. What I need now is a jolly wine bar with a bad pun for a name. That would be Wine Down in the capital Douglas.

Today, Douglas is less quiet and more prosperous than before. The finance and ‘fintech’ (financial technology) industries keep people and brokers busy – and Wine Down is full of happy and cheerful Manx people.

The next day I go to Castletown for breakfast. This is my favorite place on the island: a Georgian harbor town with a proper square and rows of pretty houses. Even the medieval castle Rushen has something cheerful about it. I talk to two young American women from Wisconsin. How did they end up with Man? A friend of a friend had suggested it and they love this little British secret.

Mark visits the island’s capital, Douglas, and finds it ‘less quiet and more prosperous than it used to be’

The Georgian harbor town of Castletown, pictured, is Mark’s favorite spot on the island

The Isle of Man is almost equidistant from the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English coasts – and different parts of the landscape will remind you of all four. Above is the island’s Snaefell Mountain Railway

And they love history. Indeed, the fold of the Manx shale beneath your feet tells the story of a land that traveled from below the equator and then broke off from the ancient Laurentia continent. The Romans were too busy building Hadrian’s Wall to get to the place the Celts called Ellan Vannin. But Man/Vannin soon found himself at the center of a thriving Viking trade route.

The Norwegian influence is still there in the name of the parliament of this self-governing crown dependency, the Tynwald. The original site is a tiered, grassy knoll just outside the village of Peel. A temple dedicated to the god Thor was also excavated.

Man has been a Unesco biosphere since 2016. But is the natural beauty enough to help the island meet its goal of 500,000 visitors per year by 2032? An alarming headline announced that the island was undergoing a ‘Shoreditch makeover’. So, are they looking for both the hipster and mindfully well-being crowd?

Mark views the exhibits at the House of Manannan museum in the harbor village of Peel (pictured)

A Steam Packet Company ad from 1932. Mark says the slogan on the poster “has long been a thing of history”

I’m happy to report that there are few signs of man changing in an inner-city London neighborhood notorious for the size of its beards and the price of its loft apartments. But there is an outbreak of fashionable cuisine.

On my last evening I start with a glass of sparkling rhubarb wine at Foraging Vintners on the harbour. Then I head to the parlor of a converted townhouse for dinner at Versa. The ingredients are scotch bonnet chilli, penny bun mushrooms, water mint dressing and fermented spruce tips.

Australian Ian, the vintner, and Leicestershire-born Pippa, Versa’s chef/owner, love the island more for its slowness and beauty than for its fashion.

In a sense, they are both descendants of the original Manx people – hunter-gatherers who settled here thousands of years ago. Every day Pippa walks through the fields or along the beach to the restaurant, and what she finds is what you get for dinner.

She is about to turn 30 and get married, but she has already decided that the island is her forever home.

“It’s so backwards, it’s forward — and I like that,” she says.