Spent my time on the west side of the island today; hence no posts – in fact I found a signal in one place; and then got a call from the office – thanks Mike.
First stop; 100 yards down the road at the Dimbola Lodge, home of Victorian Julia Margaret Cameron check out the links for more information;
You can see the hotel in the Bay, Dimbola Lodge is in Terrace Lane.
From Dimbola, I travelled further west through Totland and I quote from the Wikipedia “Totland is a town and civil parish at the western tip of the Isle of Wight. It lies on the coast at Colwell Bay, which is the closest part of the island to the British mainland.” Still further west to Alum Bay and The Needles.
Now the pictures; no particular order though…
… of course you can’t go to the Needles/Alum Bay without looking at the many coloured sand and perhaps filling a model of a teddy or a map of the island with colourful layers of sand…
The park itself is quite small; all the magic is at the beach where thousands of years have laid down different colours of silt which over time has become to spectrum of colours we see today. If you want to get down to the beach you have two options; the chairlifts or the steps of which there are 180.
… you will be surprised to hear I took the stairs down, not so bad you say – but this was just half way!
… almost there…
In the map you can see Alum Bay, Freshwater Bay on the right and those little “blips” on the bottom left are The Needles. To get a better view, I took a boat trip out to lighthouse.
… the slots are “The Old Battery”, a huge shaft and lift was installed and was a fort to protect the the Island and Britain from the French.
… then we turned and made our way back to the jetty…
… decided to take the chairlift back though…
… it was getting late, and I made my way back to a very busy Freshwater Bay, with canoe training, scuba training and lifeboat training!
… just remember tomorrow is just another day.