Isle of Man Local Custom Tips by christine.j Top 5 Page for this destination

Fairies

Not only cats without a tail or sheep with four horns are living on the Isle of Man, but also fairies.You are not supposed to call them by this name, though. They are called "themselves".The bridge dedicated to them ,however, is called the Fairy Bridge. Lots of notes, letters, pictures and even some toys have been put in the trees there, with wishes for the fairies to fulfill.
I could well understand the wish for the rain to stop, but I was wondering what the bra and the rear view mirror were supposed to stand for??

I had read that some people on the island greet the fairies by blowing their horn and had dismissed this as a legend. But no, it really happened.

The bridge is close to Santon. There are two narrow spots for cars to park, but otherwise it's a very busy road. The busdriver let us off there and in order to get back to the bus stop we had to walk alongside the road in heavy traffic. If anyone wants to go there with children, rent a car! I was really glad when we had reached the bus stop without getting hit by a car.

There is another bridge on the Isle of Man about which I had learned in the forum, said to be the real fairy bridge. This one is even harder to get to without a car, so I didn't manage to see it this time. Again something to be done on my next visit.
http://www.manxparents.net/attractions/fairy.php for this fairy bridge.
Which one is the real fairy bridge, I have no idea. I didn't see any fairy near the bridge at Santon, but it had been raining so much that I suppose they preferred staying inside their... (I don't know where fairies live)

Website: http://www.iomguide.com/santon/fairy-bridge.php

Manx Animals

Many things are different on the Isle of Man, also among animals. In Castletown we met one of the famous Manx cats. They have no tail. Legend has it that they arrived too late at Noah's Ark and their tail got stuck in the closing door.

As if to make for this, the local loghan sheep have four horns instead of the usual two. These sheep can mostly be found on the small island of Calf , but I also saw one on the main island.

Using your mobile phone

Usually when using my mobile phone abroad I dial the country code, the area code without the first zero and then the number. Since most European companies have roaming contracts with each other, this is not complicated and not too expensive. It's certainly cheaper than using the hotel phones.

On the Isle of Man this was different.
First I had to dial *, then 111, then * again,
followed by the country code, area code without the first zero and the number,
then # and push " send".
I then had to wait for my phone to start ringing.
Once it did, I had to accept the call and only then did it start ringing at the person's phone I wanted to talk to.
Really different!
By the way, when I called taxi within Douglas, I had to follow the same procedure, which meant I first had to find out the country code of the Isle of Man. It's 0044, the same as the UK.

It may be different depending on the phone company, that's what I experienced with T-Mobile.