Family friendly fun in the rain on the Isle of Wight

OK, let’s be honest, the weather on the Isle of Wight has been pretty underwhelming in the last few days. 

We aren’t quite at the stage where we can start predicting the start of the end times but it's been soggy enough to dampen a few summer holiday plans. 

If you're a data nerd like me, you can see that this sort of thing isn't really normal in this grainy image below (click on it for the proper picture).

The blue line is the number of hits to our rainy day guide during this week in 2017, whilst the orange line is the number of views of the same guide during the same week in 2016. That's a 500% increase in views in case you are interested. 

I admit you could have worked that out by looking out of the window, so apologies if that was an unnecessary bit of sharing. 

The rainy day guide has hopefully salvaged a few days, but it seemed like a good time to pick out five of our favourites:

1. Tapnell Farm Park turned up two or three years ago, and it has proven a welcome refuge on dreary days. I'd say about two thirds of it is indoors, so you can easily kill two or perhaps three hours. There's a decent indoor play section, a petting zoo and some go karts which are half indoors, half outdoors (pedal faster during the outside bit and you'll be fine). My word of warning though is that it gets very busy on a wet day, since everyone has the same idea. The indoor play area is not the place to sit quietly and contemplate such philosophical questions as whether God could create a rock he couldn't lift.
2. Newport and Ryde Cinemas always seem to have at least one kid's film during the school holidays. The Newport one is bigger and has slightly easier parking, but the Ryde cinema is generally cheaper.
3. Brading Roman Villa and Dinosaur Isle carry the slight risk of feeling like a school trip, but if your children have ever watched Horrible Histories or Jurassic World then you should get away with it.
4. Sandown Pier offers excessively noisy, neon-glowing, slightly tacky seaside entertainment. You'll probably hate it, but your kids will love it so it's worth enduring. It's fairly cheap and cheerful, with things like minigolf, indoor play and bowling. There are also seafront arcades in Shanklin, Ryde and Sandown for those who feel weighed down by loose change and have been looking for an outlet to empty their pockets.
5. Swimming pools during school holidays can be a bit crowded and echoey with a high risk of being kicked in the face by a 12 year old. However, they're just about preferable to swimming in the sea in the rain I'd say. There are pools in Newport, Sandown, Ryde and Freshwater.

There are another 27 rainy day activities in our rainy day guide, many of which are actually very good. 

Now cheer up, you're supposed to be on holiday.