April 30th was the Grand Tour of the Isle of Wight. The highlight was a lunch of cream tea at the Chessell Pottery Barn near Yarmouth.
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The pace has slowed right down. We had a leisurely breakfast that did not start until 08:00 hrs. We boarded the coach at 09:15 to be greeted by Mike, our local guide. The plan was to start at Sandown and go west along the south coast.

Our mid-morning stop was at the Isle of Wight Pearl Factory. I was having difficulty with this until I discovered these were cultured pearls. Believing that pearls don’t go with Tilley stuff, I passed up this opportunity.

The island is replete with lovely examples of thatched cottages. The rolling landscape makes for some great photos. On short, it was bucolic.

Our furthest point west, almost by definition, was The Needles at Alum Bay. It is a schlocky, touristy, kiddy playground. I took the mandatory photo of the last vestiges of the chalk ridge that used to connect the Isle of Wight to mainland Devon.

From The Needles we went northwest to Yarmouth, the ferry terminal from which we will leave on May 3rd. Thereafter, we worked our way inland driving easterly up into the hilly countryside.

We had a lovely lunch in the out-of-the-way Chessell Pottery Barn. Several types of sandwiches were presented along with the mandatory scone with strawberry jam and clotted cream. We managed to get out of there without any heart attacks. I did a short walk in a local field and was amazed at the amount of flint in the ploughed field. It must have been a real boon to Stone Age men making flint arrowheads.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere we stopped to walk beside a local stream. There were thatched roofed cottages, daffodils and bluebells to provide back drops for Bucky and Barnaby. I think half the people on the coach think that I bat for the other side.

I saw about ten partridges as we drove around and managed to get a couple of shots to prove the point.

The last stop was a quintessential tourist trap named Godshill. The squadron of coaches in the parking lot sent a shiver up my spine. This was a Tuesday at the end of April. I can hardly imagine what it would be like at the height of the tourist season. It was actually quite a dangerous venue as there was a constant whiz of traffic coming around blind corners and the sidewalk kept petering out.

Today’s journey covered a lot of the southern third of the island.

As we approached the end of our trip I spotted a Tiger Moth aircraft on a grass strip just west of Sandown. The Tiger Moth is one of my favourite aircraft.

We had travelled 97 kms on some tiny, twisty roads.