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!