'The Gateway to the Island'

Monday, August 29, 2016
Ryde, England, United Kingdom
Fresh from watching Noel Gallagher and the High Flying Birds at Portsmouth's Victorious Festival, we were up at a reasonable time to catch the hovercraft from Southsea to Ryde. This was Sam's first time on a hovercraft and after it inflated for a few seconds, it was soon zipping us across The Solent.

Ryde is the largest town on the Isle of Wight, with an expanse of sandy beach and famous for its nineteenth century pier, the world's oldest seaside pleasure pier . We had lunch in a cafe with walls plastered by photographs and promotional posters of Isle of Wight music festivals of years gone by. We visited the Donald McGill Postcard Museum, located in a historic Victorian arcade and home to many humorous and sometimes obscene postcards, as well as a potted history of the town.

We were to spend four nights on the Isle of Wight and, with neither of us having been before, felt the best introduction to this slab of rock off the south coast of England would be to hike its circumference - the 67-mile coastal path. Therefore, mid-afternoon, we set off on the first leg towards Cowes , a leisurely 8 miles, with a pleasant stop in the grounds of Quarr Abbey for a chilled ginger beer. The original Quarr Abbey was opened in 1131 but following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the new striking red-brick Abbey was built almost 400 years later in 1912.

We reached Cowes just before sunset via the town's Floating Bridge, a chain ferry across the River Medina.

 

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