In celebration of the end of the university term and in an attempt to use up some holiday, we spent a few days on the Isle of Wight last week. It was certainly a relaxing break, and a suitable one for a very pregnant woman!
Wednesday was a perfectly sunny day and we had a very scenic crossing from Portsmouth to Fishbourne with Wightlink. We took advantage of the good weather and headed straight for the Needles where we had a nice walk up to Tennyson’s Monument after some sandwiches in the deserted pleasure park (see the photo - I did see rather a lot of Dave’s camera on the first day!). After that, a slow drive along the coast took us to Mottistone, a National Trust property. We just wandered in, not realising that it was still closed for the winter. I’m quite glad I didn’t have to pay the entry fee as there wasn’t much growing yet in the garden!
We had found a reasonable deal on a hotel on the edge of Shanklin, Luccombe Hall. This was a perfectly pleasant hotel but I think they did quite a good job with their website in making it look more attractive than it actually was. Its redeeming feature was the excellent indoor swimming pool, which was nearly always empty whenever we went down to use it.
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