Isle of Wight

My blog silence is because we have been away for another few days, this time to the Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of England. When I was a child we often went there for our summer holiday and coincidentally, so did M. Apart from a day trip with TG, the last time we stayed there was twenty years ago. We like islands - there is something especially holiday-ish about somewhere that can only be reached by boat - and decided a visit was well overdue. We were supposed to get an early afternoon car ferry from Southampton, but the company had discovered a fault on one of their ferries during routine servicing and had to take it out of service for a few days. That meant our sailing time was put back until 5pm, so we didn't have time to do anything on the island on Monday. 

We realised this holiday was probably the end of an era - the last time we would take this sort of trip as a family of four with H in the back seat of the car with TG. H starts work next week, so will only have limited time off and will be less able to tag along. I'm sure there will be other family holidays - we would love to do something like last year's trip to Greece again - but the dynamics will be different.

We used AirBnB and found a very nice bungalow between Sandown and Shanklin on the east side of the island. Our two main activities were walking and eating. I'm not sure we managed to walk enough to burn off all the food, though! Our longest walk was on Tuesday, when we climbed up from the coast to Bonchurch Downs via the Devil's Chimney, a narrow cleft in the rocks which leads to a set of stairs - there were plenty of steps before this, and then quite a climb up to the Downs afterwards, so very good exercise. The girls zipped up, while M and I staggered behind, in my case coughing and puffing as my asthmatic lungs don't seem to do very well with climbing. It was well worth the effort for the views. After a slightly precarious walk back down we went through the town of Ventnor and back to the sea, before walking along the coast back to the car.  

The next day we went across to the other side of the island and spent some time sitting on the beach at Totland Bay. We ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea, then walked across some heathland to the spot above where there is a good view of the Needles (the rocks sticking out into the sea from the western tip of the island). After the previous day's climb we decided to skip the steps down to the beach at Alum Bay (or rather, to skip the climb back up!) and turned back after taking some photographs. The weather was not so good on Thursday, although it cleared after lunch; also our legs were tired, and the teenager made it clear she had done enough walking, so we visited a monkey sanctuary and then took a gentle stroll along the esplanade at Ryde. 

On Friday we spent the morning at Shanklin. We had intended to visit Shanklin Chine - a gorge running up from the sea to Old Shanklin which is illuminated in the evenings - but on Tuesday and Thursday we were too tired, and on Wednesday it was raining, so we didn't make it. The weather had brightened up, so we spent some time exploring, sat on the beach enjoying the sun, and ate lunch at a sea front inn before heading back for the ferry home. From next week life will be heading into another phase of the "new normal", with H starting work (initially from home - her company laptop was delivered today) and TG going back to school on Thursday.