Isle of Wight

The day after Easter we decided to take some time away from life at Croughton and went to the Isle of Wight (IOW). It's a small island off of the southern English cost. It took us about 2 hours to get to Southampton where we hopped on a car ferry for a 1 hour ferry ride to East Cowes, a city on IOW. IOW had alot of old WWII battlements since it was uniquely positioned for costal defense.

The island is very small and it only take about 40 minutes to get from one side of the island to the other.

Our first stop after we got off the ferry was Osborne House. It was the family home for Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their children. You are able to walk through most of the house to view the rooms as they were in the time of Victoria. From the gardens behind the house you can see the ocean. A short walk down a path takes you a building called the Swiss Cottage. The cottage was built so that the children for V & A could learn real life skills: cooking, gardening, and basic economics through selling their produce. Another building next to the cottage houses collections of various items that were either given to the family or were collected by the children themselves. These collections included animals, birds, rocks, and minerals.

We then made our way to where we were going to stay, the Old Park Hotel. It is situated on the south coast of the IOW. It caters to families and made things very easy for both the parents and children to enjoy themselves. The kids would have their own dinner and then, when the parents would eat, there was a movie being shown in another room or there was a listening service for kids that stayed in their room asleep. It was great being able to have dinner without having to cut meat, mediate arguements, and remind about manners (except that Jennifer would have to remind me :-) ).

After dinner the first night Jennifer and I took a walk down one of the paths on the hotel property to a rocky beach. The next morning we wanted to visit St Catherine's Lighthouse a few miles from the hotel. It was a nice walk through various fields, dodging cow patties, to get there. Unfortunately the lighthouse was closed that day. We walked on a path that ran along the cliff until we found a spot where we could climb down to the beach. We hung out there a little while and then decided to try to visit St Catherine's Oratory, a lighthouse from the 14th century on a high hill near the current lighthouse. 0 for 2...the Oratory was covered by low clouds and would remain so for the rest of the vacation. We grabbed a change of clothes, went to a local town, ate lunch and then went to the beach. The weather was beautiful. Jennifer and I laid on the beach listening to the waves and feeling the sun on our faces. The kids were playing in the sand. In the distance you could see a steady stream of cargo ships.

On Wednesday we went out to the western tip of the island to visit Alum Bay and the Needles. At Alum Bay, if you follow a path down to the beach, you can see multi colored sand. The coloring is from the different minerals in each section of the sand. Afterwards we found a beach (rocky and sandy) on the way home. We hung out there for a couple of hours. Jennifer found an outcropping of rock which became known as "Jennifer's Rock" and the kids and I hunted for shells and sea glass. It was another great day just handing out at the beach.

That afternoon we stopped at the Isle of Wight Glass Works. It was next to the hotel. The entire glass creation process was in one large room in the old converted farm house. You can watch them create both regular collection pieces and their own individual creations. They were very approachable for questions and seemed very welcoming.

On Thursday we returned to Croughton but not before visiting the Brading Roman Villa. There wasn't much left of the walls and structures bu the villa contained some amazing mosaics ranging from Medusa's head to a caracticure of Galius Ceasar in the shape of a rooster (Gallus in Latin means rooster). After that we stopped off at the Bembridge Lighthouse nearby before catching the ferry to return home.

It was a great 3 day getaway where we all could relax and spend some time together as a family!