I.O.W Day 5 - 18/05/07

Our last day :o(


Rise early, pack up the car, scoff some brekky and leave our temporary home for the last time. The crap signposts in Newport catch us out again and we end up heading towards West Cowes which is just not right. We need East Cowes for the ferry and the only way of getting from West to East is via some kind of floating ferry bridge. Do a U-Turn and eventually arrive at ferry port at 8.30am having just missed the early ferry... boooo!



We are, however, obviously on time for our 9.30am booked departure so settle down in the car to wait for boarding. We are on the ferry by 9.15am and grab a table asap. Mark heads off to the canteen area while I guard the table from all the Olds. They hover around me in a menacing fashion - I dare not look them in the eye in case they attack me for my seat - so I busy myself writing in my journal until M returns with an English breakfast that cost something ridiculous like £7.00 and wasn't particularly special. Take my advice - bring your own food.



The only thing of note that happens while we are on the ferry is that we pass the Queen Mary II (right) which is a big cruise ship.
It's definately big.

Anyway, we arrive at Southampton and are on our way home by 10.30am. We have decided to go for a relaxing day and head directly for Sauna World for a bit of R&R. After Sauna World we continue the lazy sitting down theme by going to the cinema to see 28 Weeks Later. Indulge ourselves for the last time with an Iceblast, HUGE bucket of popcorn, a hotdog, and some truly delicious Bresler's icecream which had toffee and chocolate and other gooey stuff... It's better than Ben & Jerrys. Nuff said.
The movie is good as well - follows on from 28 Weeks Later and has more of the impressive "deserted London" scenes that we saw in the first film.

Finally actually go home after the cinema to see our moggies, unpack, lie on the sofa, and order take-away pizza. We had a great time in the I.O.W and will hopefully go back someday to go camping. Favourites were the I.O.W Zoo (don't forget to watch Tiger Island!) and scoffing fish 'n chips on Sandown Esplanade in the sun :o)

I had fun everywhere we went though and have to say thank you to Mark for chauffeuring me round all week and putting up with my terrible map reading skills!

I.O.W Day 4 - 17/05/07

Woken early by the stupid workmen and their loisy lorry :o/

Rise, eat brekky, and are on the road by 9.15am. Our destination this morning is Alum Bay and The Needles.

We take another tour of Newports one way system because we just love it and end up driving towards Yarmouth. This wasn't really our intention but on an island that is twenty six miles by twelve, as long as you are heading in approximately the right direction you'll get where you're going soon enough! We hit Yarmouth at 10am and both agree that it looks nice... no time to dawdle though as we have elected to make a stop at Fort Victoria Country Park on the way to the Needles. We did stop and have a look, but it wasn't open yet and didn't look particularly inspired so we gave it a miss...

Arrived at Allum bay just after 10am - viewed the Needles from the viewing platform and Mark took a couple of snaps before we descended the 181 steps to the beach. The cliffs here are made of multi-coloured sands and I enjoyed looking at the different shades and also hunting for pretty rocks on the stoney beach. We didn't fancy the walk back up the cliff so took the chairlift which was mildly scary as it was a bit blustery but did offer very good views of the bay.

Having lost at the crazy golf on Sandown Pier I decided we should have a best of three mini-tournament and proceeded directly toThe Needles Park Jurassic Golf course where you'll be glad to know I won the round setting the score at one all... it would now all rest on the third and final round to be held at Shanklin Esplanade later in the day... more of that later. I'll bet the suspense is killing you isn't it?!Anyway, we finish our experience of The Needles Park by having a look round the shops and buying some yummy sweets from the Sweet Manufactury. You can watch them making the sweets but we chose to just eat some instead! Picnicked in the car overlooking the bay and had a conflab about our plan for the rest of the day. Having decided that sometimes it is better not to have a plan we set off along the coast road towards Blackgang and the infamous Blackgang Chine. Along the way we drive through Freshwater, Compton Bay, and numerous other little villages. The scenery was impressive and weather really lovely. This I think was my favourite part of the island - it seemed more remote and rugged which is the kind of thing I go for. Sadly the camera battery died at Alum bay so we have no pictures but if you clicky the above link for Freshwater you'll get the idea. We saw a campsite in Brightstone (I belive it was this one) which looked like a great base for a walking holiday and seemed like a great place to just chill for a week.

We arrived at Blackgang Chine and took a look in the fossil shop which had a small but interesting exhibition on dinosaurs / fossils etc. Mark was initially keen to go into the park but I managed to talk him out of it as the place scares me! It's just a weird place full of eccentric attractions... I know we came here on the aformentioned school trip of 1990 as I have a picture of myself sat on a model dinosaur in particularly attractive pink tracksuit.. this is a picture that I NEVER want to re-create! Mark did however manage to wind the camera battery up for one last picture...

Following our narrow escape from the weirdyness of Blackgang Chine we continued to follow the coast road back towards Shanklin Old Village with a view to playing more crazy golf and a dinner of fish n chips. We missed the old part of town on our last visit so parked up at the top of the Chine for a look around. It is another very pretty area with more old buildings, thatched roofs, and tea shops (obviously the Olds were out in force again, this being their natural environment) and sits on the cliff above the beach and Esplanande. Having looked around a few of the shops we made our may down many steps to the beach below.

The route we took brought us out at the very end of the beach, past the Esplanade and the lower entrance for the Chine. The weather was improving all the time and the sun had his hat AND shades on by this point so I whipped my shoes and socks off and braved the cold water for a paddle. I have to admit that I didn't paddle for long but it was nice just to sit and chat and watch the sea for a while, relaxing in the sunshine and skimming stones (which btw I am hopeless at!). I could have happily sat there for the rest of the day, but we had the important deciding game of the crazy golf tournament on the schedule - to be held at Shanklin Esplanades Jungle Golf course...

This was definately the best crazy golf course of the three, with fun theming and a more challanging course. The sun had chucked his hat and shades away and donned his speedo's by this time - Mark managed to get sunburn and I was down to jeans and a vest top. Obviously I won the final round and as such am the current Crazy Golf Champion - Mark tells me the courses in Florida will be much more difficult, I think he is just jealous of my skills!

Our plan had been to have fish 'n chips in Shanklin Old Village but the shop was closed - I had heard of Fat Harry's fish 'n chip shop in Sandown so this seemed like the obvious direction to head in and also gave us an excuse to re-visit our favourite place - the IOW Zoo :o) So after struggling back up the cliff (tired feet!) and a short drive we find ourselves in the company of big moggies again!

We made a bee-line for the Ranthambore exhibit to see if we could get a good picture of Diamond (having remembered that we both have camera's on our mobiles that we could be using) but he was still snoozing so I spent another happy hour watching Zia and Zena who were both up and about. We are also treated to some chat from Sabu and right at the end of the day, just before closing, the keepers carry out part of their animal enrichment scheme with the two female jaguars (Tequila and Chiquita) - hiding meat for them to hunt for. One of these girls was found living in someones garage in Ireland and the other came from a travelling show that didn't want her anymore. I'm glad they have a better home now and it was very interesting watching them hunt high and low to find their dinner.

Diamond is still snoozing as we leave so we will just have to go back again one day to get a piccy of him! We were definately ready for dinner by this point and Fat Harry's doesn't dissappoint - we both go for classic cod and chips with red sauce and it went down a treat! We ate our dinner sat on a bench on the Esplanade in the sun, and followed it up with a 99 icecream (avec flake) and a final stroll along the beach.

I'm glad we went back to see the big cats and I would definately like to visit the South-West part of the island again one day - maybe for a camping trip. Really enjoyed this day and was a bit sad to be leaving the next morning.

I.O.W Day 3 - 16/05/07

We had a mission on this morning to find an internet cafe and try to secure Mark some tickets for a sporting event. I had researched and found an internet cafe in Newport on Scarrets Lane... only problem is we don't have a map detailed enough to tell us where this is. We rise vaguely early and set off at 8.50am in search of said internet cafe... I attempt to use the map in our atlas for Newport before Mark points out that it is actually Newport in Wales that I'm looking at :o/

We make it to the centre of Newport and park in a small pay and display - somehow through a stroke of either pure genious, or luck, Scarrets Lane leads from the car park we have picked!! Whats more, we step out onto the main street and there is another internet cafe staring us in the face. We now have an hour to kill before these tickets go on sale. We take a quick tour of all the tea & coffee shops in Newport before deciding on Graces Quality Bakers and Confectioners. Mark has a HUGE belgium bun with tea, I settle for a coffee.

Into pay as you go internet cafe, log on ready for sale at 10am... ticketmaster is shit. Technical difficulties (ie Ticketmaster being shit) means sale is pushed back to 11am. We kill time. Finally log on at 11am - ticketmaster is still shit and crashes. We try for 1/2 hour before giving up and heading for somewhere altogether more fun - Amazon World.

So Amazon World is mostly indoors - it has a number of different areas based on different environments, eg. the canopy / river / desert etc, and also an outdoor area. On the way through you learn about the different Eco-Systems and the effects that human beings have on them. Some favourite animals were the Tamandua which is a small climbing anteater that lives in trees, and the Kinkajou which is a nocturnal mammal and was hanging around upside down by his tail.

Mark was very taken with the Giant Anteater (above right) and I liked watching the meercats (right), who seemed a bit portly to me! There were also some Jackass Penguins, so called because their call sounds like a donkey - and I can confirm that it does! It is from Amazon World that the baby penguin Togo was stolen in 2005 and never recovered. Thankfully his parents have raised a new chick since then - the guidebook also notes that Amazon World is the first place in 55 years in the UK to breed a sloth, and the first place ever in the UK to breed a Tamandua Anteater. They are currently part of 28 conservation breeding schemes. The guidebook here was very good - unique style and very informative.

All in all we very much enjoyed Amazon World - saw some unusual animals and learnt a lot about conservation and the need to preserve the rainforests. Take a look at the website for more information.

We had another picnic in the carpark at Amazon World before heading to our next destination - The I.O.W Owl and Falconry Centre found in the grounds of Appuldurcombe House at Wroxall. Got to the Falconry centre at 2pm - next display wasn't until 3pm so we had an hour to kill. Spent some time looking at the birds on the weathering ground, had a cream tea in the cafe and generally relaxed before the display started. There was only one other couple there so it was almost an exclusive showing! We see a Steppe Eagle (Henry), a peregrine type falcon (Samson) and an American Bald Eagle (Cherokee). They have two other displays at 11am and 1pm and fly different birds at each demonstration. Apparently Chorekee is always last out in case he doesn't come home again - he'd take down any of the other smaller hawks!

Henry wasn't really in the mood for flying but Samson was flown to the lure and was very quick (below left) and crafty trying to catch the falconer out with nimble turns and using the trees as cover. Chorekee (above left) went "fishing" in a small pool which was very cool to watch. I have never seen a big eagle do this before and it is amazing seeing the way they control their approach and manage to grab the tiny peice of meat from the water. The falconer gave a talk throughout and was very informative, although a lot of the information I had already learnt from my visits to the Hawk Conserancy in Andover. I would have liked to have seen the other two flying displays but even if you took the tour round Appuldurcombe house itself, and the gardens (designed by Capability Brown) I don't think there would be enough to keep you occupied in between. Still, the display was good and we also got a close up look at some red kites which was interesting as we have a resident pair that can be seen flying above or house in Lower Earley occasionally.

From the Falconry Centre we went directly to Ventnor Botanic Gardens and walked down to Steephill Cove (right). We had a mooch on the beach - which would be brilliant for rockpooling if the weather was better - and then set off along the coastal path towards Ventnor Esplanade and our destination for dinner, The Spyglass Inn. Mark had scampi and I had seafood taglietelli which was lush, before we headed back along the coastal path to pick up the car and take our weary feet back to the mobile home for a well earned rest!

I.O.W Day 2 - 15/05/07

Woke up early but it was VERY cold so we stayed wrapped in three duvets until 9.30am. Finally dragged ourselves out of the warm cosy bed, had a quick brekky before setting off on a very windy and rainy day. Picnic packed, waterproofs on, Time 10am, destination Dinosaur Isle.

Dinosaur Isle is found on Culver Parade just down from Sandown Esplanade and is Britains first purpose built dinosaur museum and visitor attraction. The building itself is deigned in the shape of a pterosaur (above right) and houses fossils, life size models, and skeletal reconstructions of actual dinosaur remains found on the I.O.W. I had no idea that the I.O.W is so important regarding fossils and paleontology but having been to Dinosaur Isle I could tell you all about it now!

We arrived at the same time as a school party which is never great but with the rubbish weather and this being an indoor attraction, was inevitable. I'm also not above shoving small children out of the way so this didn't impact on my enjoyment of the museum too much anyway! The exhibition starts with the "Time Walk" which takes you through the different periods in time , and then splits the marine Cretaceous into three parts, with examples of fossils and information boards on each period.

You then move into the Dinosaur Gallery which is the main attraction and has life size reconstructions, one animatronic interactive model, and all sorts of skeletons that have been found on the island. Highlights were the Neoventor (thought to be related to Allosaurus) and the "Barnes High Sauropod" which measures about 15 metres in length. Quite a few of the big finds seem to have been made by unsuspecting families on holiday - now that's got to really piss the professionals off! I thought Dinosaur Isle was great - you can book guided tours to the sites of geological interest and for fossil hunting trips which sounds like fun, they also give free admission for fossil identification just in case you have discovered a new type of dinosaur. I did my best but I didn't find anything on this trip...

Having looked round Dinosaur Isle we emerged into some kind of force 10 gale and took shelter in Sandown Pier which has your typical British holiday amusements and to our glee a Crazy Golf course. Brilliant!
So we had a round on The Lost World Adventure Golf which sadly I lost and then played on the 2p shove machines for a little while.

At this point the weather seemed to be clearing a little, the sky looked less angry and you could walk upright against the wind so we seized the moment and headed up the Esplanade to The I.O.W Zoo. We had a picnic in the car park (which was to become a bit of a theme on this holiday) - Mark managed to park the car directly in front of the only other people picnicking in their car, completely obscuring their view of the sea. We moved to a different spot, ate the picnic and entered the zoo...

The zoo is small and really more of a sanctuary for big cats and lemurs but I LOVED it!! Their goal is to offer long term homes to captive animals who are not suitable for breeding or have been rescued, and to increase awareness of specific conservation schemes. They have a collection of monkeys and lemurs and a creepy crawlies house, but the main attraction is watching the big cats - Siberian and Indian Tigers, African Lions, and Jaguars. True to form a lot of the moggies were snoozing and weren't about to let a bit of rain intrude on this very important pastime. Some were active though and we witnessed a bit of a scuffle between the two male lions Charlie Brown and Snoopy who were very imposing! They seemed to be trying to impress the lioness Nahla who couldn't have cared less what the boys were up to.We saw a beautiful and unusual "marmalade" or "Tabby" Indian Tiger called Diamond who lives with his sister Aysha (bottom right) - apparently they have a very close bond and she did give her brother a wash while we were there which was nice to see. These two live in the new Ranthambore exhibit(see above) which seemed like a very good and up to date environment. There is a lot of development work going on at the park - they have also built the Kanha Exhibit which is modelled on Kanha National Park in central India. This is intended to help raise awareness of the national parks and conservation work going on in India. There are other areas of development in progress which will house Tigers already at the park once complete.

My favourite big cat lived in the Kahna Exhibit - Indian Tigress Zia ( right and below left). She lives with her sister Zena who is a rare white tiger. Zia was the most active Tiger of the day and was brilliant! She was stalking a member of zoo staff who was doing some groundwork near the enclosure - he said she is always doing it, to visitors as well as staff! Both Zia and Zena were hand reared so I guess it is a good game for her. In the picture on the right she is hiding behind the foliage waiting to pounce!

She was very inquisitive, playful, and charismatic. I completely fell in love with her and watched her for an AGE! There are too many big cats for me to mention by name but they were all beautiful and if you have a chance you can read about them all on the website or even better see them on the Meridian TV show Tiger Island (Sunday afternoons). Hopefully this show will raise awareness, revenue, and allow them to build the new enclosures that they want to. We had a look round the gift shop, bought a fridge magnet, key ring, and mousemat with Zia & Zena on (I really did fall in love with her!) before heading home. We both really enjoyed the Zoo - and agree that it was our favourite attraction in the whole trip.

We veered into The Old Smithy at Godshill on the way home which is a weird sort of collection of gift shops, gardens, and tea rooms - the Olds were out in force here and were loving it! Mark had been set the challenge of obtaining the best "bit of tat" to bring home as a gift for our mate Dave that he could find. We found the perfect example here at The old Smithy - a truly ugly ornamental thingy that was on offer at £1.00 because no one else in the world had poor enough taste to buy it!

We stayed warm and dry in our mobile home in the evening for dinner with some booze and a game of scrabble... which I won :o)

I.O.W Day 1 - 14/05/07

Woke up at 5.53am and got up straight away. Packed the picnic, loaded the car and set off for Southampton at 7.10am. Predictably we were WAY too early (we always are) so stopped for brekky at Winchester services. Arrived at Southampton Docks at 8.55am and drove straight onto the 9am Ferry - we had booked the 10am but no one seemed to care and we weren't about to argue.

Ferry took 45min and we had arrived and were on Isle of Wight soil by 10am. We got a teeny bit confused about which way to go (which is what happens when you put me in charge of the map) but soon enough we had arrived at our first attraction of the day - Butterfly and Fountain World in Wooten.


Here we encountered the biggest moth in the world - a Giant Atlas Moth, and numerous other butterflys, moths, birds, and hairy catterpillers. We were also lucky enough to see one of the butterflys emerge from its chrysalis. They also have some Japanese /Italian themed gardens with fountains, Koi carp and jumping jets.



At midday we decide to head for Carisbrooke Castle as we are in vaguely the right area. Have some fun navigating Newports one way system but it doesn't take long before we are walking the battlements at the castle.

I came here on a school trip in 1990 when I was 10 but have very little recollection of it - It had more of an impact on me this time and I really enjoyed just wandering around with the guidebook learning about the history. It was a very windy but clear day and standing on top of the Keep you could see a long way into the distance. In the picture on the left you can see a small church on the hill - the rest of the hill is a cemetary, the headstones literally covering it and dominating the view. We both found this very poignent and there was an audible intake of breath from everyone as they acsended the top of the Keep to be met by this view.

There is a small museum at the Castle and at intervals you can see one of the resident donkeys turn the wheel to bring water up from the well - we saw Jim Bob who was very cute and seemed to know the ropes very well despite only having been in the job for a couple of months. Having looked around, perused the museum, and brought the obligatory fridge magnet for our collection, there was only one thing left to do - PICNIC! It was a bit cold so we ate in the car but were treated to a side show by two ducks who appear to live in the castle car park and were almost as keen on the idea of a picnic as I was!

2.30pm and we are on a roll - quick consultation of the map and we head towards Shanklin, passing through Rookley and Godshill on the way. We locate Rookley Country Park which is where we will be staying for the week, but check in time is not till 4pm so we decide on a visit to Shanklin Chine. There is an entrance to the Chine through Shanklin Old Village at the top of the cliff - you'd never know this from the signposts though so we ended up parked on Shanklin Esplanade and going in through the bottom entrance.

We walk up through the Chine (which apparently means deep narrow ravine formed by water, and is a word of Saxon origin) looking at all the different plants, the aviarys, the view across the bay and of course the waterfall. The stream falls a total of 105ft from the top of the waterfall to the bottom of the chine. There is a small heritage centre here which among other things tells the story of PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) which was used to pipe petrol 65 miles under the channel to Cherbourg during the Normandy invasion in 1944 and ran directly through the chine.

We had a quick walk on the beach at Shanklin before heading to our accomodation at Rookley Country Park. We arrive and are a bit apprehensive as there seems to be building work going on. Collect our keys and drive around to "Red mobile home 15" - we seem to have been upgraded as we have parking directly by the mobile home and it is big enough to house 6 people! The mobile home is big and everything works fine - the electricity metre is already loaded up and the linen we hired is waiting for us.

Having done the rep thing and cleaned a few of these mobile homes myself I have to say that the cleaning wasn't quite up to scratch but frankly for the £38 we paid for the week (Holidays in the sun - Sun newspaper) you can't really complain! On the whole the site was fine - there was a small indoor and outdoor pool, and other facilities like a bar / takeaway. We didn't actually use any of these - too tired for swimming and the bar was of the evening entertainment holiday park type which isn't really our thing! There is also a small fishing lake and once the building work/improvements are finished I'm sure it will be much more tranquill.

After a tour of Rookley Country Park and settling into our temporary home we head to Godshill for dinner. Godshill is just 5min down the road from Rookley and is a very picturesque little village with a 15th Century church and cottages with thatched roofs. The story goes that the villagers tried to build the church in a different location three times but each time the stones were removed to their present position on the hill. The villagers - not being stupid enough to lug the stones somewhere else for a fourth time - decided to leave the church on the hill and named the Village accordingly... Gods-Hill.

We had driven through Godshill earlier on when it was populated by hoardes of old people seeing how many Yea Olde Tea Shoppe's they could visit in one day... not to mention how many model villages, craft shops, and ornamental gardens it is possible to tour in a week! (I'm telling you the Olds have stamina when it comes to tea shops!) Anyway, we did a quick wander round then repaired to The Griffin for our dinner. Mark had pie, I had tortellini, we shared an icecream sundae for dessert and also downed a well earned couple of pints of guinness before heading back to the mobile home to rest our weary heads ready for tomorrow.

A very busy but fun first day to our holiday!

I.O.W - The Bare Bones

So before I start rambling about our trip in too much detail I thought I would just post an itinery of what we did on each day:

Day 1 (14/05/07) -

• Ferry
• Butterfly and Fountain World
• Carisbrooke Castle
• Shanklin Chine
• Dinner at The Griffin - Godshill

Day 2 (15/05/07) -

• Dinosaur Isle
• Sandown Pier
• I.O.W Zoo
• The Old Smithy - Godshill

Day 3 (16/05/07) -

• Amazon World
• I.O.W Owl & Falconry Centre
• Steephill Cove
• Coastal Path to Ventnor / Dinner at The Spyglass Inn

Day 4 (17/05/07) -

• Needles Park
• Allum Bay
• Drive coast road via Blackgang to Shanklin
• I.O.W Zoo (again - we liked it!)
• Fish n Chips / Icecream by the sea at Sandown

Day 5 (18/05/07) -

• Departure / Ferry
• Sauna World
• Cinema - 28 Weeks Later
• Arrive home :o)

In the begining...

I guess I should do some kind of introduction.

Welcome to my BLOG - I have finally got round to setting one up in the hope that I will have worked out exactly how to use it properly in time to write a trip report of our Florida Extravaganza in september.

I'm going to start a bit smaller though, with a trip report of our journey round Isle of Wight from 14/05/07 - 18/05/07.

We had loads of fun so I hope you enjoy reading about it too!