The Isle of Wight

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We had an early start this morning so that we could catch the ferry over to the Isle of Wight from Lymington. We were aiming to catch the 10.45am ferry so wanted to arrive in Lymington by about 10.15am. We pulled up at the ferry terminal closer to 10.25am and with no booking we were told to join queue 5 and we would be fitted on the 10.45am ferry if possible.

When loading started we inched our way forward to the head of queue 5 and it was looking like we were going to be first on the 11.45am ferry when all of a sudden they decided they could fit one more car on. Yay, we made the 10.45am crossing!

On our arrival at Yarmouth we turned left towards Newport. Just short of Newport we took the road out to Cowes. We found a park and paid for a couple of hours parking so that we could walk around to the headquarters of the Royal Yacht Squadron. After walking out to the RYS and seeing the starter’s gun we strolled back to the car popping into all of the gift shops along the way since we are, once again, on the lookout for a snow globe following the disastrous accident that occurred with the one we already purchased in Spain! The only snow globe available in Cowes, seemingly in every gift shop in Cowes, took tackiness to new lows. I think we are going to struggle to find one as ‘nice’ as the one we already had??!! I asked Bernie if any other tacky tourist novelty would do as there were some lovely glass animals filled with coloured sand from Ventnor, but Bernie tells me that it HAS to be a snow globe!!

We took the floating bridge (chain ferry) from Cowes to East Cowes rather than driving back to Newport and then out to East Cowes. From the other side of the river we made our way to Osborne House, the royal villa built by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a summer retreat. Unfortunately, Osborne House is not a National Trust property so it cost over £10.00 each to visit the house and gardens!

Quite a lot of the house is open for viewing so we spent some time going through the house. We were all quite amused by the display ‘downstairs’ dedicated to the table dressers! We certainly hadn’t realized before that the staff who set the tables were a separate and distinct profession. They were required to use a set square and a measuring stick to ensure that the table settings were absolutely perfectly aligned!!

Out in the gardens we explored the parterre and then walked to the Swiss Cottage - the ultimate cubby house that was built for the royal children out in the ‘backyard’.

With the afternoon getting away from us we headed off on a fairly quick circumnavigation of the island via Ryde, Brading, Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor. We didn’t really have time to stop in any of these towns, we pretty much just drove into each to be able to say we had been there and squeezed off a couple of quick snaps for the slide show!! I think we came to the realization fairly early in the day that you can’t really ‘do’ the Isle of Wight in a day! If we ever come again we shall certainly plan to stay on the island for a few days.

From Ventnor we drove across the southern part of the island and then out to The Needles at the westernmost tip of the Isle of Wight. This area has been shamelessly commercialized with the cliff now fenced off so that you can only access the beach by taking the chairlift down. Even if the chairlift had still been open I doubt that we would have taken it down to the beach. Instead we satisfied ourselves with a couple of photos of The Needles from the cliff. Mind you with the silly fence in the way I almost took my eye out on the cyclone fencing trying to compose an attractive shot without having the fence in it!!

After the obligatory stop at The Needles we drove back to Yarmouth. We had in mind to catch the 9.15pm ferry back to Lymington which left us time for a quick dinner at The Bugle pub. By the time our meals were ordered and delivered we were finishing them off at about 9.05pm! We walked quickly back to the car which was parked in an area adjacent to the ferry loading area. With only four cars waiting in the queue we managed to get ourselves onto the 9.15pm boat. We have been really lucky with the ferry both ways today with the barest minimum of waiting time at both ends!

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