Thursday 21 June 2018

Isle of Wight - Best of the Rest #2

Hello again everyone ๐Ÿ˜€

On Monday I shared with you some of the 'Best of Rest' of our holiday on the Isle of Wight last September.

Today I am sharing #2 with you and this should see our visit totally covered. I can't quite believe that there is so much to do on such a small island and there is still lots that we didn't get to see.

So today I'm starting off with ...

Mottistone NT
Mottistone is one of the island's National Trust properties and though we had visited before, we were more than happy to have another look.

Thought the weather wasn't the best, it was quite dull, the gardens still had plenty of colour and interest ...

Whilst you can't visit the house it did look lovely nestled in the heart of the garden ...
We also had a wander across to the church opposite, which is well worth a look if you are visiting.

Winkle Street
Winkle Street is a pretty row of cottages which often appears on photographs and postcards of the island. We couldn't resist a quick visit to take a look ...

Carisbrooke Castle
We spent a lovely afternoon at Carisbrooke Castle, which is an English Heritage property.

There is a fair amount to see and do within the site ... a chapel, Princess Beatrice's garden, the Great Hall & Museum, amongst other things ...
We explored all of the ground level first then, fuelled up on refreshments from the tea rooms decided to walk the walls ...
... which gave some fabulous views of the whole of the site ...

Even though it looked more than a little daunting we couldn't not climb the steps to the top of the keep ...
It was definitely worth it ...

Having gone up, we were left with no option but to go back down, so down we went, very slowly ...
The last thing left for us to see was the well house, where we saw one of the donkeys walking the wheel, as they would have done back in the day, to lift water from the well.

All of the Carisbrooke donkeys have names beginning with the letter 'J'. This tradition was started when Charles I was a prisoner at Carisbrooke. When Charles I wrote letters or was planning his escape route, he always signed his letters with a 'J'. So for 150 years all the donkeys at the castle have had a name beginning with this letter.

Nowadays the castle donkeys provide demonstrations of the well house each day the castle is open, spending the rest of their time relaxing in warm stables, being groomed by their supervisors or grazing in the five acre field behind the castle. Their duties are much lighter than they were historically, and they are only expecting to turn the wheel twice each demonstration, around 30 seconds of work.

Ventnor Sea Front
We loved Ventnor. We loved the Botanical Gardens and we also walked along the coastal path to Steephill Cove.

There is another long promenade in the opposite direction and we walked along to Bonchurch one wild and windy afternoon ...
We couldn't quite believe it when we got to Bonchurch and were faced with the holiday cottage that our friends had stayed in earlier in the year ๐Ÿ˜ฒ

We made the walk back and headed into Betsy and Spinky's for light refreshments before having a wander along the main sea front ...
We walked right back to The Spyglass at the far end of the bay, where we had dinner, and very nice it was too ...

As you can see, the weather stayed pretty grey for us all day.

Our view as we started to head back for the car is my last Isle of Wight holiday photo ...

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Thank you for letting me share our Isle of Wight adventures with you. We both certainly fell in love with the island, it is just beautiful and there is so much to see and do. We stayed for two weeks and didn't even get to visit Newport or Cowes and lots of other little villages and coves so we will definitely be back.

So .... until the next time ๐Ÿ˜€

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