Next morning with no ill effects from the cycling(!), other than my numb hambones, Jo and I went down the Wye Valley from Monmouth to Chepstow passing Tintern Abbey where the muddy tide was driving large lumps of driftwood upstream. At the Severn Bridge, (the "old" one), we filled up with diesel and a litre or so emptied onto the forecourt from mysteriously disconnected pipes under the fns wheel arch. M4, Chippenham, across Salisbury Plain to
Woodhenge, (just along the road from Stonehenge). Best viewed from a helicopter, (I didn't have one with me), this is an early Bronze Age site that originally consisted of 6 concentric rings of timber posts. How high they were nobody knows, but possibly even higher than Stonehenge! The posts locations are marked by concrete pillars representing the widths of the originals.
The site was surrounded by a henge, (a bank or ditch), and had a causeway entrance to the NE marked by entrance pillars and from which angle I took this photograph. There are likely to have been several of these henges near to Stonehenge. The last was found 20 miles away in 1999.
Down into Salisbury past the great and powerful earthwork of Old Sarum. It definitely deserves a proper visit. Originally an Iron Age hillfort this impressive earthwork consists of an outer defensive wall and an inner rampart rising at an angle of over 45 degrees and measuring 40 feet from trough to top. The fortification was occupied successively by the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, the Norman conquerors of England and right on up until about 1500.
We whizzed into Southampton arriving at the very smart Red Funnel ferry terminal two hours early. We'd got a good deal, (mail me if you'd like details), and very good staff had copy tickets ready for me. (Yes, we'd lost the originals).
We were offered a slot on a waiting ferry and took it, thereby avoiding a two hour snooze in the van, (and I'd been quite looking forward to it too!). Out past stinking Esso at Fawley with the cloud so low that the tops of the refinery chimneys were hidden from view.
Landing in East Cowes we drove through the apparently uninteresting outskirts, past apparently uninteresting houses, through apparently uninteresting countryside to a smart campsite a little inland from Sandown. Hmm. We set up the awning and drove down to the beach at Sandown. Hmm, again. It was still very overcast and windy. We watched three competent sailboarders, and a sand-yacht was being whizzed up and down the beach.
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Day 1
Next morning in Shanklin it was sunny! And... Ooh, look! There's that van again.
Never anywhere have we seen as many VW Transporters as we did on this island. Most of them were Type 25s too, but you'll perhaps be relieved to know that we photographed none of them. (Well, none of them were as handsome as ours).
We drove along the prom and back and then walked past the smart, but usual seaside trashy shops and amusement places and went up the cliff path, (avoiding the lift!). After an pleasant wander we discovered the thatched roofs and much older and more interesting buildings of Shanklin Old Village, the part you see on IoW postcards and jigsaw puzzles. The pubs were advertising live music on most evenings, (jazz, of course and you can bet it was trad. too).
It's indicative of the sad mental state into which VW ownership can take you, that in the old village we bought two large VW Transporter egg cups and a large VW Transporter piggybank, (as a present for someone else). We also bought a 1:50,000 OS Leisure map which was good, [in that it showed loads of prehistoric monuments, none of which I found, (none of them were signposted), but bad in that it showed no contours].
Returning to the van we saw a couple staring at the back window. The man had been looking at the Free Tibet sticker. He didn't "want to bore the arse off" us, he said, but he'd recently been getting into Zen Buddhism. And off they went, (leaving our, collective(?), arse intact.
Off we went west and south along the coastal road towards Bonchurch and Ventnor, little of which I remember, but we did climb some surprisingly wiggly roads up into that low hanging cloud again. It was around this point however, because things were generally looking up, that we felt able to admit to each other that we'd both, privately and silently, been very disappointed by our first impressions of the island on Day One.
At Isle of Wight Glass we watched, you guessed it, glass being blown. Fabulous stuff it was, and entrancing to watch the skilful supercool staff making their astonishingly expensive products.
On past Blackgang Chine, (about which I remember many years ago my "Bournemouth Granny" talking), and down onto the Military Road. This runs through what one might describe as the backside of the island and in the lowering cloud, (or sea mist?), it was, (strange though this may seem), reminiscent of the less interesting parts of the Western Isles, (aka Outer Hebrides). Like surprisingly many of the Isle of Wight's roads a section of the Military Road was closed due, I assume, to a troublesome tendency they have to, at least partially, collapse! Landslides, or slips, are not as unusual as one might want them to be.
At Freshwater Bay, (there's a lovely name), we called in at Dimbola Lodge, to which I could very easily put up a link, but I can't be bothered! Well, there was something odd about the place.
It did contain an exhibition of recent and truly fabulous wildlife and nature photography, but its exhibition of the 60s/70s IoW pop festivals' posters, etc., was disappointing. What's more it seemed to be the only place on the island which provided vegetarian food only, so, having read that they "specialised" in vegetarian food, we'd been looking forward to something a bit special. It was thoroughly average and really no better than one might expect in an "omnivores'" establishment.
At The Needles mist was about all we could see. A 6ft fence surrounded the parking area, but by standing on the front bumper and waiting for the right gap in the mist, (or was it very low cloud?), this is the most impressive view we got. When you look at all that chalk you begin to realise why so many of the roads are liable to subside.
Our return journey to the campsite took us on a partly parallel route through some cuddly little villages. Perhaps despite appearances, this was a good day. We were happy to have found some handsome scenery on the island, even though at times it had been hard to see it!
170104: I wish that when we were there I'd known (more) about this though.