There has to be no other nation on earth, well, maybe, of comparable size, that has so many Public Walking Paths as Britain. The right to trudge along, in fair weather and foul (‘dreich’, if you’re in Scotland…and let me tell you, when the weather is dreich in Scotland, you feel it in your bones) is protected. Some footpaths are hundreds of years old, used, in days past, to travel between villages or to go to market for the rural populace…and the right to cross fields without the blessing of the owner is now enshrined in law.
We’ve come to The Isle of Wight, the opposite end of Britain, a little off the south coast, to holiday for a while with my sister and brother-in-law, Sandra and Jan and to hike as a foursome. The island lies across the Solent - a diamond-shaped parcel of low-lying land (the highest elevation on the island is just behind Ventnor at 650 feet) literally crisscrossed by foot paths. The coastal path is 110 Km in length; there is a wealth of books on how to do the coastal path; and the total length of the foot paths on the island runs to some 800 Kms. The island has 130,000 residents, but is visited annually by 2.5 million visitors.
There are a some really memorable hikes on the island, including a relatively short one (10 Kms) from Ventnor where we stayed, to Sandown. The ‘high’ point of the hike is the descent into a dale so overgrown and green it makes you stop in awe of nature. The trees are not so much big and tall as strange with limbs all akimbo, covered with a profuse growth of several types of ivy. The valley floor is a carpet of ferns and wildflowers. It felt - special.
We moved along and, in a clearing, stood The Bonchurch, more of a chapel than a church really but built before William the Conqueror came to look around, in the 11th century. Graves from hundreds of years ago – worn, eroded inscriptions. A treasure deep in the woods still used for worship.
Ventnor, in the south, where we stayed, is known for antique shops – the High Street is just one long line of antique shops – great if you’re into that kind of thing. Just off the left end of Ventnor, however, is the extensive Ventnor Botanical Gardens, right on the coast in a bay. This bay has a sub-tropical microclimate due to the ‘downs’ (more of this later) behind it, thus it grows palm trees and giant elephant ferns, bougainvillea and bizarre cacti more suited to the American south-west. Worth a visit. Ventnor has a fine beach and boardwalk and is known on the island as THE place to go for antiquing.
If you like castle-hunting, I think I mentioned I am (elsewhere), there, roughly in the middle of the island near Newport is Carisbrooke Castle.
This spot has been fortified and strengthened since Roman times, most notably when the Normans defeated the Brits in 1066. The castle is in great shape, most of the curtain walls are standing and much of the interior housing can be visited.
The castle had two notable occupants: Countess Isabella de Fortibus, who became one of the greatest heiresses of the 13th century. Born in 1237, married to an Earl of great possessions at 11, by the time her husband died in 1260, she had borne six children at the age of 23. This was commonplace at the time. With the death of her brother two years later, Isabella owned lands in the north of England by her husband and the counties of Devon, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, making her that rarity, an unusually powerful woman. She made Carisbrooke her home, transforming it into a setting with sumptuous building befitting her wealth and prestige. Her apartment windows had glazed glass – another rarity at the time. She never remarried and, on her deathbed, willed the castle to the care of the crown.
The other notable, though a definitely reluctant one, was King Charles I, who was a prisoner in the castle in 1647. He made two futile attempts to escape. In the first instance he averred to his supporters that if he could get his head through the bars of his window, he could get himself all the way through and down to his helpers below. In what can only be described as a Charlie Chaplin skit, he got stuck and could not move forward or backward until his cries brought his jailers to his ‘rescue’. He met his maker in London a year later, accused of treason.
There is a farmer’s market in Newport on Fridays where we bought and enjoyed a soft blue cheese made from unpasteurized Guernsey cows’ milk from the Queen Bower Dairy in Sandown.
The other great walk is to The Needles on the coast, up and along the Tennyson Downs, from Freshwater Bay. Now all you Brits know that ‘downs’ are really ‘ups’ (weird language) and refer to uplands of any sort, but not too tall, then they become hills. Along the route from Ventnor to Freshwater Bay by bus it is easy to note numerous bronze-age burial barrows around Mottistone Downs, and an iron-age fort can be accessed with difficulty on Chillerton Down. Over 240 bronze-age barrows have been identified, mostly near the south coast, some having been plowed over, some worn down by centuries of feet. Materials from below the mounds have been dated to 1400-1600 BC, and nearby stands The Longstone, the lone megalithic monument on the island.
Before starting your ‘arduous’ 11 Km walk up the down, you must stop and fortify yourself with a dram at the aptly-named Albion Hotel which can trace its lineage to the time in the 1600’s when it was a smugglers’ hang-out.
So then on to the spectacular Tennyson Downs walk to ‘The Needles’. Imagine starting the hike at sea level and slowly gaining altitude, while at your left a chalk cliff grows ever taller to a height of 400 feet. Think of the Cliffs of Dover and you get the idea. Halfway along you come to the Tennyson Monument, a huge granite Iona cross erected in 1897 in memory of Alfred Lord Tennyson who lived nearby and often walked the downs. At the far end of the walk are The Needles, a small group of chalk islands heading away from the mainland in a straight line and Alum Bay, slightly off to the right known for its multi-coloured cliffs.
The Marconi monument on Tennyson Downs commemorates the spot where Marconi started testing wireless telegraphy from shore to ship first in Alum Bay.
Shanklin and Sandown towns sort of run into each other on the east coast. Both have this slightly faded, down-in-the-mouth look to them as if they really needed a fresh coat of paint or something… The visitors and residents, at least on the coast, are mostly elderly. There are senior discounts advertised in the B&Bs’ signs. On the other hand, Old Shanklin Village is well worth a stroll, where a profusion of thatched roof cottages, some three hundred years old are found. The Old Thatch Tea Shop (1690) and fairy garden is worth a stop for home-made traditional cakes, bacon rolls, and traditional ‘fayre’.
And, of course, this being Britain, the island has its fair share of historic pubs, one of them being the Castle Inn in Newport dating from 1550. A watering hole existed even earlier, around 1300, being just outside Carisbrooke Castle, it was “a den for thieves and vagabonds”. The Anchor Inn in the yachting town of Cowes is a nice place to stop for lunch.
One last destination has to be Godshill in the middle of the island, a good 13 Km hike on the Stenbury trail from Ventnor. Godshill has the largest concentration of old thatched-roof cottages on the island. Now, most of these are selling bits of this-and-that with names like The Olde Smithy, The Vinery, The Cider Barn and such, but Bat’s Wing Cottage has been converted into an English Tea Room and is well worth a visit and another chance to just have tea and crumpets with Devonshire clotted cream – so civilized.
A short climb up to All-Saints’ Church is a must, built in 1042, just before the Norman conquest, passing by cottages with their sides covered with kumquat vines loaded with fruit. It is said to be the most photographed church in England and was started in the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066).
Getting back to your base by bus is easy with Southern Vectis. Daily and weekly passes make the fares, normally expensive, more reasonable. All the passengers say Cheers, or Cheerio and Thank You to the bus-driver – it’s normal here. If you buy a daily or a weekly regular bus ticket you can also get on any and all of the specialty tourist buses plying the island’s roads. Just be careful not to have your hat (or your head) knocked off by low branches, if you’re sitting on the top tier.
A must visit is Osborne House near Cowes, one of Queen Victoria’s favorite summer residences. Built according to plans drawn up by Prince Albert, her consort, it is sumptuous beyond measure. To describe the detailing of the rooms, the ceilings, the frescoes, the furniture, the paintings cannot ever be sufficient. It must be seen.
For kids there are plenty of attractions like entertainment parks, near Seaview, Amazon World, Zoopark, Isle of Wight Zoo itself with a tiger breeding program near Sandown.
Like so many places, Wight has its set of festivals and regattas. There are annual hiking festivals, a cycling festival. September has the Blues Festival in Ventnor and the Jazz festival in April in Ventnor.
Of Note: It was in Cowes that Prince Charles met Diana during the Cowes Week regatta.
Egypt Point is just a little to the west of Cowes along the prom – called that because in the 16th century there were a bunch of gypsies whom the locals called Egyptians who camped out here for several decades.
If you love exploring, hiking the countryside is the only way to go. You never know what you’ll find… Standing Stones from Pictish times outside Kirkcaldy, Fife; Stone Circles in the Cotswolds, ancient public houses in Wight, or pre-historic drawings in sea-side caves near Wemyss.
What's not to like.
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