Isle of Wight Holiday Diary #16 - Our very last day and the Newtown Nature Reserve

Hi there everyone 😀

Well here we are ... a week into three weeks of some serious social distancing, it's raining and last week's warm temperatures have dropped a fair few notches, but never mind all of that ... Welcome to the last of my Isle of Wight Holiday Diary posts. Whilst I am glad to finally have shared all that we saw with you ... there is a hint of sadness. It has been lovely looking back over a fabulous three weeks spent on the island and I have no doubt whatsoever that it won't have been our last visit.

For now though, here's how we spent our last day ...

Day 21 - Friday
Whilst we wanted to make the very most of our last full day on the island before heading for home we didn’t venture far from Bramble Cottage.

We were back off the beaten track and got to visit the Newtown Nature Reserve. It's a funny little spot ... with a tiny National Trust property, though the town hall, with no town was closed again ...
I am beginning to wonder if we will we ever get to visit this property.

Our mission was to have a good walk, picking up the clues we needed for a Geocache. We parked up on the small car park and had a look at the map ...
We were going to pretty much take the orange route which took us down past one of the bird hides and out to the old salt pans and quay ... but not before having a bit of a closer look at the old Town hall ...

We booted up and left the car park, passing one of the pretty cottages in the tiny village ...
... before heading a bit more 'off piste' ...
Our first stop was the bird hide ...
... where we stopped for a quick warm up and a look at the view ...
It was totally different to anything else we'd seen on the island ... beautiful, but pretty bleak and there was one heck of a chill wind blowing.

We left the relative warmth of the hide and continued on our way to the quay on the old salt pans ...

It wasn't long before we came to the gate of the boardwalk ... leading off into the distance ...

The boardwalk was fascinating ...
I was quite pleased with my photos ... but after we'd returned home and received this year's National Trust magazine I was even more impressed with these shots ... which are most definitely not mine ... but it was pretty cool knowing that we had walked in those exact same footsteps ...
Down at the quay it was grey, it was very exposed, windy and cold and it boy was it bleak ... but it was beautiful ...

It was also really interesting, with lots of evidence of the activity that used to take place here ...

The footpath took us along the edge of the quay ...

... and there were some cracking views to have looking back across the marshes ...
The path then starts to head back inland and away from the cold wind, across the Coastguard Meadows ...

and brings you back into the village by the pretty little church ...


From here it was but a short walk back to the National Trust car park and back to where we had started.

It was a really interesting walk, pretty exposed and windy down by the quay but we'd really enjoyed it and were so glad that we’d finally got to explore this last bit of the island coast before it was time to leave for home.

So that was pretty much it for us ... one last night back at Bramble Cottage, packing and getting ready for the off on the following morning. We'd had a fabulous three weeks exploring the island ... we'd seen lots of places a bit more of the beaten track than we'd seen before and we'd loved all of it.

We were both said to wave goodbye to the island as we took the ferry from Yarmouth back to Lymington for our drive home ...
Thank you Isle of Wight ... you were amazing ... I only hope it's not too long before we are back 😁😁😁

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