There were a large number of rooms open and fully furnished in the house (palace?) but no pictures allowed. However, the grounds were beautiful and the sun came out (yeah!!) by the time we had finished the interior tour.
The tour ended on a large Italianate plaza full of flower beds and fountains.
The view from the plaza gave great views across The Solent to Portsmouth.
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| The Solent and Portsmouth |
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| Osborne House Gardens looking towards The Solent |
We checked out the menu at the restaurant but nothing sounded interesting so we took a long walk around the grounds.
We then headed off on the Swiss Cottage Road where we got more great views of the House.
The mile long walk took us
to the “Swiss Cottage” a rather large playhouse used by the nine children of
Victoria and Albert to “learn” practical skills like baking, serving tea and
gardening.
We had lunch at a little sandwich shop behind the Swiss Cottage and then walked back to the main area around Osborne House. After some searching we finally found the walled gardens with a recycled entrance (formerly the front façade from the original house at Osborne) and, of course, a wall around the entire garden.
The gardens had a beautiful central trellised walkway...
some whimsical topiary pigs in a small brick walled enclosure...
and lots of flower beds, although many of the flowers in this one were a
good bit past their prime. It was still pretty though.
Leaving Osborne House we then drove to the far west end of the island to see The Needles, some jagged rocks off an outcropping.
It is one of the iconic views on the Isle of Wight and there is a chairlift down to the beach for other views. Unfortunately, the top of the cliff is dominated by a rather large, somewhat cheesy amusement park. Regardless, we bought our chairlift tickets and rode down the hillside to the beach.
The beach was hard to navigate with a deep layer of largish round stones and only a little sand near the water’s edge. Nonetheless, it was a pretty area with many families picnicking and playing in the surf.
The geology was interesting here. Too bad we didn't have Jim to explain everything to us. The cliffs near The Needles looked to be white chalk. However those closer to the chairlift were absolutely Technicolor. Really beautiful.
We headed on along the English Channel side of the Isle to our next stop, Freshwater Bay, with its white cliffs and a lovely sand beach.
The drive along the coast and the countryside was beautiful...
with many Red Squirrel signs. After asking around and doing a little research we found out that the red squirrel is the only squirrel native to England. However, it is rapidly being replaced by the bigger and stronger North American grey squirrels that were introduced in the early 1800's. The Isle of Wight is the last refuge of the red squirrels and every effort is being taken to keep the grey's off the island. We saw lots of signs about the red squirrels and red squirrel souvenir items but no actual red squirrels.
We made a deliberate detour to the last stop of the day, Brighstone, stated to have “picturesque thatched vernacular and much photographed Grade II listed Cottages.” While technically true, there were only about
three thatched cottages on one street and a couple of other scattered about.
It took all of five minutes to see the houses and the town and while the one street was cute is suffered
greatly from comparisons with Castle Combe. While there we decided to do the obligatory visit to the little village church (St. Mary the Virgin) and adjoining cemetery.
Dinner at the Three Bishops pub was pretty good though, probably the highlight of Brighstone.
We then opted for a scenic route home.
On the way we ran into “Diversions” (detours) in Ventnor (due to
“land slip” [landslide]) that really routed us around the town. But we finally made it home to Shanklin and the sea shore.
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