Of all the islands we visited, the Isle of Wight is closest to the UK; the ferry ride was only a couple of hours from mainland (opposed to like six or seven). It was also full of surprises.
Like this! I fully found Sooty!
By surprises I mean some things we did we thought would be AWESOME, but were actually somewhat disappointing, whereas other things we stumbled across blew our minds.
I am sure that everyone would agree that a triceratops is an example of awesome.
Our first surprise was our hotel. While the name was not imprinted on my brain, its decor will forever be burned into my memory. It was nautically themed and full of old people. Best of all were that areas of the hotel were named after areas of a ship. We got to stay on poop deck; Baiky and I were very excited about this.
Let immaturity reign supreme.
An example of a disappointment was our visit to an area that I thought was famous for dinosaur fossils (Isle of Wight is well known for its prehistoric remains). However, all we found was a dinosaured themed adventure park, and while I sometimes act a little childish (see above), there are limits.
Gemma on the cliffs.
So Gemma and I walked along some nearby cliffs, which brought us to out next surprise - a rocket!!!
Yup, an ancient rocket ship.
As one is want to do on the Isle of Wight, we visted the Needles; chalk stacks rising out of the sea near the west coast. Let me tell you, this area had been done up bythe local government for the tourists, and boy, did they turn something good into something I immensely disliked!
The needles!
It was expensive to enter, there were gaudy rides, and it was impossible to get a good look at the stacks. The stacks been the entire reason we were there.
Found some chalk though.
It wasn't all bad though. The needles does have a few other points of interest I was unaware of. A monument commemorates the first place wireless signals were sent across open sea, there was really cool glass blowing demonstration, and it was also a site for testing rockets. This area was used extensively in the 50s and 70s to test rocket technology.
Did not realise glass blowing actually meant blowing glass.
We also found two fascinating villages, one an old timey crafts village, which was okay, and one village for birds and monkeys; this was awesome.
Baiky relaxes with a Cider from Isle of Wight, in a stone bottle (perfect for keeping my brews) and stone goblet (I've always wanted one of these).
