Bluebells, flint, hares and West Wight
May. 4th, 2014 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatSince we can't do Walk the Wight this year, due to being in Italy, I thought I'd do the route of its second half today, coming back by a more scenic route that took in the coast and lots of bluebells.
I started at Carisbrooke, parking behind the castle, and headed out on the Tennyson Trail to the car park on Brighstone Down. Bits of the path were still awash with puddles, with the poor walker forced to teeter along a slippery 2 inch-wide dry fringe. In May, this should not be! It certainly should not be a week before 10,000+ walkers are going this way on Walk the Wight. I hope the marshals are planning to go ahead and deal with it, perhaps using straws.
Many farms in this section appear to grow nothing but flint. While I am well aware that flint is the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, I am surprised that island farmers are also aware of this (don't the Reigners keep it secret?) and I would have expected them to grow things greener.
The path also passes near these masts. There is another similar station about 6 miles away. For years, I was under the impression that they were one and the same, and this misconception led to considerable bafflement and misunderstanding about island geography. I actually quite like the way modern industrial archaeology fits into the landscape. After all, much of what we now consider quaint and an asset to the landscape is the "eyesore" of the past. There's precious little that is "natural" in any of the landscape of the island, even though the anti-wind turbine protesters once stated that the landscape of island was unchanged since the days of the dinosaurs. "All this beauty is of God," they declare. Well, only if God built hedgerows, cleared woodlands and was employed as a thatcher.
Okay. Stepping off the soapbox now. Where was I? Oh, yes. Masts. (Actually, this picture was taken in the afternoon, on the way home, but oh well...)
This is the Gurt Hill of West Wight. The main path is the right-hand one. It looks depressingly vertical as you approach it. It isn't quite as bad once you get there.
Here be coos!
And here be a happy cowpat, probably ritual.
Here are the two traditional views of Freshwater Bay. I always photograph it from these two points, whatever the weather, and whatever the direction of the sun. It isn't normally being besieged by a Border Force boat, though.
The world and its mother was out in West Wight today. The Walking Festival (the UK's biggest) is in full swing, so little groups of be-rucksacked ramblers were often seen strolling (or in one case, charging) across the downs. There was a round-the-island cycle ride, with about 4000 cyclists taking part. (Why do they always have such thin legs? Shouldn't be they all a-muscle?) Golfers were out in force on the hill-top golf course, and for several miles, the following chaps were circling above me, casting their shadows across my path, and occasionally going "Whee!"
The charging group tried to headhunt me, by the way. I was accosted by their back-marker, who gave me his card and invited me to join the Long Distance Walking group. This was in a high-traffic part of the coastal path, and I saw him pass many other people without giving them his card, so I don't know what it is about me that exuded "possible recruit."
Here is a landslip in the process of happening. The path still runs across the patch of ground that is clearly not long for this world.
At Brook, I headed inland. I'd intended to visit Brook Church, which always looks so inviting up on its hill outside the village, but time was getting on by then, so I didn't.
At this point, my route was determined by bluebells. The bluebells on May Morning had been very impressive, but it was too gloomy to photograph them, and besides, I had no camera. The privately-owned bluebells in the grounds of Brook Hill House were guarded by armed guards:
The National Trust bluebells, however, were not:
After the bluebells, I eventually got back to Brighstone Down, and was left just with the 6 mile walk back to Carisbrooke, retracing my steps from earlier. Here is Brighstone Forest. I really can't resist taking pictures into the sun in woodland.
A few miles later, I saw my first ever hare! (Although I'm not sure how I've managed never to see one before.) There were two of them initially, far ahead of me on the path, and they looked so huge I thought they were foxes, at first. The pictures are taken on a very big zoom, and are thus horribly out of focus, but I took them for identification purposes. One of them then charged towards me, and settled a lot closer, but in shadow. It then scarpered into a Field of Flint, and I saw it haring along at about a hundred miles an hour, across the white.
And finally - yay! - only 8 hours after I left it, I get to see Carisbrooke Castle again! Sadly, it is too late by now to buy some cinnamon-spiced mead as I pass it. It closes at 6. I passed it at 6.01.
I did have to walk up and down the lay-by a few times when I got back to the car, since I refused to accept a 29.91 mile walk, when I could so easily turn it into 30.
I started at Carisbrooke, parking behind the castle, and headed out on the Tennyson Trail to the car park on Brighstone Down. Bits of the path were still awash with puddles, with the poor walker forced to teeter along a slippery 2 inch-wide dry fringe. In May, this should not be! It certainly should not be a week before 10,000+ walkers are going this way on Walk the Wight. I hope the marshals are planning to go ahead and deal with it, perhaps using straws.
Many farms in this section appear to grow nothing but flint. While I am well aware that flint is the most valuable commodity in the galaxy, I am surprised that island farmers are also aware of this (don't the Reigners keep it secret?) and I would have expected them to grow things greener.
The path also passes near these masts. There is another similar station about 6 miles away. For years, I was under the impression that they were one and the same, and this misconception led to considerable bafflement and misunderstanding about island geography. I actually quite like the way modern industrial archaeology fits into the landscape. After all, much of what we now consider quaint and an asset to the landscape is the "eyesore" of the past. There's precious little that is "natural" in any of the landscape of the island, even though the anti-wind turbine protesters once stated that the landscape of island was unchanged since the days of the dinosaurs. "All this beauty is of God," they declare. Well, only if God built hedgerows, cleared woodlands and was employed as a thatcher.
Okay. Stepping off the soapbox now. Where was I? Oh, yes. Masts. (Actually, this picture was taken in the afternoon, on the way home, but oh well...)
This is the Gurt Hill of West Wight. The main path is the right-hand one. It looks depressingly vertical as you approach it. It isn't quite as bad once you get there.
Here be coos!
And here be a happy cowpat, probably ritual.
Here are the two traditional views of Freshwater Bay. I always photograph it from these two points, whatever the weather, and whatever the direction of the sun. It isn't normally being besieged by a Border Force boat, though.
The world and its mother was out in West Wight today. The Walking Festival (the UK's biggest) is in full swing, so little groups of be-rucksacked ramblers were often seen strolling (or in one case, charging) across the downs. There was a round-the-island cycle ride, with about 4000 cyclists taking part. (Why do they always have such thin legs? Shouldn't be they all a-muscle?) Golfers were out in force on the hill-top golf course, and for several miles, the following chaps were circling above me, casting their shadows across my path, and occasionally going "Whee!"
The charging group tried to headhunt me, by the way. I was accosted by their back-marker, who gave me his card and invited me to join the Long Distance Walking group. This was in a high-traffic part of the coastal path, and I saw him pass many other people without giving them his card, so I don't know what it is about me that exuded "possible recruit."
Here is a landslip in the process of happening. The path still runs across the patch of ground that is clearly not long for this world.
At Brook, I headed inland. I'd intended to visit Brook Church, which always looks so inviting up on its hill outside the village, but time was getting on by then, so I didn't.
At this point, my route was determined by bluebells. The bluebells on May Morning had been very impressive, but it was too gloomy to photograph them, and besides, I had no camera. The privately-owned bluebells in the grounds of Brook Hill House were guarded by armed guards:
The National Trust bluebells, however, were not:
After the bluebells, I eventually got back to Brighstone Down, and was left just with the 6 mile walk back to Carisbrooke, retracing my steps from earlier. Here is Brighstone Forest. I really can't resist taking pictures into the sun in woodland.
A few miles later, I saw my first ever hare! (Although I'm not sure how I've managed never to see one before.) There were two of them initially, far ahead of me on the path, and they looked so huge I thought they were foxes, at first. The pictures are taken on a very big zoom, and are thus horribly out of focus, but I took them for identification purposes. One of them then charged towards me, and settled a lot closer, but in shadow. It then scarpered into a Field of Flint, and I saw it haring along at about a hundred miles an hour, across the white.
And finally - yay! - only 8 hours after I left it, I get to see Carisbrooke Castle again! Sadly, it is too late by now to buy some cinnamon-spiced mead as I pass it. It closes at 6. I passed it at 6.01.
I did have to walk up and down the lay-by a few times when I got back to the car, since I refused to accept a 29.91 mile walk, when I could so easily turn it into 30.
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