You can get a Calor gas tank refilled there - look through the previous posts, I think someone said where. (Glen Helen? - you can ask at the tourist information office). You go there and park on the safe side of a high secure fence behind which you can see how they do it. Give the chap your bottle. He knows what the empty weight is, and what it should weigh when 80% full. He sticks it on a weighing machine and connects the hose and turns it off when it's 80%. There's a big tank of lpg in a shed and he fills it from that. You can stand and watch.
I used to live there so I think I know where I would stop, up the hill towards the castle? at Douglas head. Past the radio transmitter aerial there is a gravel car park. That road used to run along the cliff but a landslide closed it so it doesn't go anywhere so in theory it's quiet but you can get boyz in their BMWs doing donuts just to annoy you at night.
The biggest attractions on the island outside of the TT and GP are all the Victorian things they have preserved. Steam railway, electric railway, tram, palace theatre, there's a lovely kids playground at Silverdale Glen. They have re-routed a small river to run past a small water wheel which, via underground shafts, drives a roundabout. With the riders on the roundabout another person can vary the volume of water feeding the wheel and thus the speed of the roundabout. The glen is lovely, highly recommended. Then there are the Gents (and maybe the Ladies?) toilets in Douglas. You go down steps into them and they have renovated them as they would have been in 190something. Full height urinals fed with polished copper pipes, black and white tiles, and oak doors with penny in the slots - but you don't have to put a penny in.
As for the ferry, you only have one choice of company, Steam Racket as it is known. Very expensive, but you won't regret going, it's one of those places you wish you were a resident. And you can be, they aren't in the EU. So long as you are self supporting financially you are very welcome to go and buy a house and live there. Don't try asking for social security money or claim any nonsense about asylum or they'll escort you on to the next ferry back. Their unemployment is less than one percent - or at least it was when I was there. If you have any skilled trade (teacher, plumber, banker, police, fire, anything that you would call a proper job) you can easily get a work permit and take up a new life there. If you get a £100,000 mortgage you don't start paying income tax until your earnings exceed £50,000 p.a. Then it is about 5%. They don't waste money on layabouts pretending to be unemployed so they don't need to tax a lot..
