Day 1:East Cowes to St. Helens.

We walked from our hotel in Carisbrooke to Newport and then took the bus to East Cowes, where we started our walk at around 11am. The first 45 minutes of the walk was noisy and polluted. We were walking beside the A3021. We passed the public entrance to  Osborne, the private residence of Queen Victoria as well as her own private gateway to the estate.

Traffic density was about a vehicle every 3 seconds. After Whippingham we turned SE onto a B road  and things improved slightly. The traffic density decreased, good, but the pavements disappeared, bad. We had to keep crossing from one side of the road to the other to avoid being caught behind a blind corner. The walk became more rural and we walked for a time through a small woodland area.

On approaching the outskirts of Wootton the path became more suburban, until we eventually reached the bridge over the Wootton Creek.

We then headed towards Fishbourne on pathways which locals often tried to make appear only as private roads. We caught our first glimpse of sea behind the pub called "The Fishboune,".  

.A little further on we came upon Quarr Abbey, a comparatively modern Benedictine Monastery, complete with gardens and pigs. Further on we passed by the ruins of a Cistercian Monastery, before crossing Ryde golf course and entering Ryde. 

Ryde seemed to be a typical British seaside town, but one  with an exceptionally long pier. The tide appears to go out even further than it does at Southport, leaving miles and miles of sandy beach!

I've not shown the amusement parks and children's funfares, they are much the same everywhere, but we did pass an interesting folly on our way out and I've got you a photograph of that. It's called the Appley Tower built in 1875..

We left the seashore near Seaview Bay and headed inland. The photograph below is the view looking north(ish?) towards Ryde.

In passing through Priory Woods we saw this very interesting tree. We have seen trees of a similar species near Sacramento, Acacia Cellphonicus.

Out of the woods we had a small road section before crossing a field with horses. At the bottom of the field we entered an interesting copse area shown below. We left the copse via open paddocks eventually joining a road which led past marshes on the north side of Bembridge Harbour leading to St. Helens where we caught the bus back to Newport.