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Could insurance be £30,000 per annum to travel outside the country?  So the Isle of Wight it was, and we found accommodation with spectacular sea views just two-and-a-half miles as the crow flies from the Needles, seen here in the early evening. Maybe I'll start with why we went there. A trip to St David's in Western Pembrokeshire had been planned for Spring 2025 before I got leukaemia and it was deferred to the beginning of October[1]. We loved being in St David's but the drive was just too much for one driver[2]. So we thought of getting a train to France to visit Shan's cousin, Craig, in Saint-Romain, roughly 50 miles NE as per the proverbial crow from Bordeaux. I needed to renew our foreign travel insurance which had cost a tad under £150 a year to travel to most of the civilised world. I obviously had to declare my leukaemia and any warning bells turned to sirens. I was put in touch with a call centre in South Africa and was grilled for an hour about my affliction. It turned out they wouldn't insure me for a year, only a one-off trip. I told them about plans to visit Craig for a week and they came back with a quote for circa £650 FOR ONE WEEK. I told the call centre operative as politely as possible what the company could do with that. "Can you give me a day to come back with maybe something better," she responded and she was true to her word: "great news Mr Harrison I can offer you a better quote ..." "OK?" I queried. "How does £630 sound?" her voice smiled. I gave the company its marching orders and to this day have been badgered, by what is presumably a bot, practically every day. Efforts to obtain a better package from other companies haven't come up with much either. So we donned our thinking caps. The drive needed to be a maximum of two hours (within reason) and suddenly the Isle of Wight looked beckoning. Shan took delivery of a new car (much the same as our old VW ID3 except it can do a considerably greater distance on one charge) on November 13 and we set off 5 days later to try it out. Four years younger than the original and there were subtle differences, particularly with the satnav. My insistence on foregoing the delights of the A34 to Southampton and embracing a shorter route I'd travelled many times a decade or so ago turned the journey from scenic to sceptic. We were catching the ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth and our contingency began to evaporate. Actually it turned out fine with half an hour to spare. That didn't make my case for avoiding the A34 on the return any easier, though. We arrived at our week's accommodation without much further ado and were delighted with the views from Hurst Castle across the English Channel to what I imagine was Anvil Point Lighthouse 20 miles away. Above (l-r, top-bottom): views from the journey to Totland Beach x4; leaving Lymington; handy restaurant just down the road; Hurst Castle and surrounds; Bournemouth and even Swanage beyond. Having taken the car, we set about getting everything but the kitchen sink into our rented apartment. We were slightly daunted by the fact that it was 3 floors up (actually 4 if you counted the bit from the car park to the ground floor) and the instructions from our landlady to access our penthouse from the rear of the building were slightly complex and Shan managed to trip, fall and hurt her knee quite badly. So far, not so good, but things soon improved. We did a bit of gentle exploring around Totland and adjoining Freshwater before retiring to plan the next day. First stop Shanklin on the opposite side of the island. Just to set the canvas, Totland is about as far West as one can go on the island and Shanklin appeared to be pretty much on the East Coast. My wife and chauffeur looked a tad concerned at my suggestion that we take a Northern loop on the way out and a Southern loop on our return. Fortunately I was able to point out that the Island was 23 miles wide and 13 miles from top to bottom and that the much maligned large black bird could make its way around the perimeter in less than an hour. In our case travelling from our beach retreat to the delights of the Shanklin Esplanade on the South East coast could be achieved in less than 50 minutes while driving a car sedately. Our old mate Garnet Currie (from Durban 55 years ago and more recently Surrey), and a frequenter of Shanklin, very kindly compiled a list of said delights of the seaside town. Sadly we were visiting in November and, while the town centre was fairly lively with its retro splendour, the Esplanade was all but shut down. Above (l-r, top-bottom); a retro shop in the town; smart houses on the clifftop; sea view from the Shanklin clifftop; the lift from the cliff top to the Esplanade. We had parked the car in a convenient municipal car park with fast charging points and decided to walk through the town to the esplanade. Having admired the houses gazing out to sea from the clifftop we prepared ourself to walk down to the water's edge. The presence of a lift was encouraging but there didn't seem to be any way to activate it so we followed the signs for the path to the bottom. Alas, the path was closed and it was a substantial walk to the bottom the long way around so we eventually fetched the car and took a quick drive but most of the establishments were closed for winter so we decided to carry on to Ventnor to see if had any more to offer ... A short drive to the South, we focussed on Ventnor's promenade, which seemed to have a fair bit more going.on. We later discovered that the seafront was in the midst of a Beaujolais Nouveau revival and the patrons of the only pub were spilling out of its doors, many of them in French costume. We decided to try elsewhere and caught sight of a bar/restaurant claiming to offer tapas. It was also offering a seafood chowder with crusty bread and butter and we were sold. Delicious it was, too, and we were pleased we'd forsaken the pub. Above (l-r, top-bottom); once a figurehead and now begging an obvious question; the enticing menu at The Met; stately housing halfway down the hill; making way for something new?; birds, sea and sand; silhouetted by a threatening sky. Ventnor didn't have the towering cliffs of Shanklin but was on the edge of a pretty, steep hill tumbling down to the promenade. We parked at the North end and walked along the much shorter promenade to the entrance to the pub at the South. As well as being full, as previously mentioned, there were a few slightly risqué "statues" that appeared to have been sawn from old boats at some time in the past. On our return walk northwards we noticed excavations where there must have been seafront amusements and now appeared to be being prepared for further construction. After our sumptuous lunch Shan picked our way in the car up some very steep and narrow lanes to return to the coast road and headed gradually westwards past a place with the intriguing name of Blackgang that didn't look that intriguing when we got there. What was intriguing, though, was encountering the back side of the peninsula that ends in The Needles and incorporates the National Trust parks of Needles Headland & Tennyson Down. We first spotted it caught by the sun poking through the cloud to highlight the chalk cliffs. By the time we found a place to stop, however, the sun-as-spotlight on the chalk cliffs had retreated behind the cloud and, no matter how long we waited, refused to reappear in its full glory.  Above (l-r, top-bottom); the back of the Needles headland; will cliffs and clifftop road meet sooner rather than later?; finally the Needles. The cliff on the right of this panorama, when inspected more closely, revealed that the coast road was becoming scarily close to the edge! Eventually we moved off and sought the actual Needles in the fast fading afternoon light. Shan was able to capture a unique angle on the famous landmark by incorporating the fence preventing careless tourists from tumbling off the cliff that is hidden in the foreground. Big day out to Osborne House Osborne "House" is renowned as Queen Victoria's favourite place[3]. Her beach cottage. Some might think it a folly. Basically she bought the property, including its then existing stately home, from Lady Isabella Blachford in October 1845. It didn't take long for Victoria and her consort Albert to tear down the Blachford home and rebuild to a standard of opulence almost unimaginable in a beach house. It seems he liked the view of the Solent and compared it to the Bay of Naples. Building on this theme, over the next six years an Italian Renaissance palace emerged and the happy couple filled it with priceless bric-a-brac from most of the corners of the globe. Before you even see the house properly, Prince Albert's love of things arboreal is gorgeously evident. The magnificent trees in parklike surroundings seem contrived to mask the house on your approach. Above (l-r, top-bottom); Coastal Pines and various Oaks, including a magnificent Quercus Suber, catch your eye on the way in (3); the North East corner of the house. When finally revealed in all its glory (the North-Eastern bit viewed from the South-West, at least) the house is pretty ugly. Almost like an overambitious council building[4]. Once we were inside, however, the sheer exuberance of the vast decorations and assembled artefacts really does take one's breath away. It was difficult to cull the photographs (encouraged by the owners, English Heritage, BTW[5]). I managed to reduce our selection to the 12 below; I think Shan might have been happier with a few more ... Above (l-r, top-bottom): a magnificent corridor traverses the rear of the house, crammed with opulent artefacts; a candelabra in a similar vein; a family portrait dominates the 10-seat "family" dining room, which must've needed a spare chair if the whole family was assembled; opulent chaise with an even more opulent piano in the background; a not particularly welcoming waiting room for visitors; the stairway to heaven; about to mount the stairs?; ornate fireplace in main dining room, in which the peacock took 500 hours to complete; main dining room and ceiling; main dining room and minstrels' gallery; Queen Victoria didn't use the stairs; anyone for billiards? As it was officially Winter we had been confined to the ground floor and the mostly opulent reception areas. An exception was the visitors' reception room, which must have been a bit intimidating with its cramped darkness and horned chairs. There was some hint of what the upstairs floors of the building might have been like with the beautifully light, open staircase in the middle of the building. The huge statue at the foot of the stairs may have been suggestive of nubian nymphs being transported via these stairs in to the inner sanctum! Who knows what the whims of an empress might have been in the mid 19th century?  Above (l-r, top-bottom): a view from the palace windows across the terrace to the Portsmouth of 2025; another view from the terrace itself down to the sea at the Queen's beach; perhaps the beach cottage is at its most handsome when viewed from the South-East side and framed by trees; trees also form a luscious feature created by the arborist in Prince Albert more or less 175 years ago (x2). Having gorged ourselves on the contents of the house we decided to take a stroll down to the beach, a matter of some 2 miles once we'd furtled around the Swiss Cottage and the so-called beach. The most helpful man in the shop/entrance to the estate advised us to do this in an anticlockwise direction to avoid struggling up the precipitous hill from beach to cottage. We were grateful to him for this when we encountered some of the uninformed guests battling up the shorter but steeper hill. Prince Albert was renowned for the time he spent encouraging his children to the extent that he created a vegetable garden and playground for them that would have made a sumptuous home for a family of commoners. The main structure being a double story cottage he had bought in Switzerland, had disassembled and reassembled out of sight in a wood in the Osborne grounds[6]. If you're going to expect to do this tour, including traversing the house, plan for around 3 miles of walking (more in Summer if you're allowed upstairs) although there is a bus for the outdoors sections, hence the "Beware of Traffic" sign in the penultimate picture above.  Above (l-r, top-bottom): beautiful avenues abound on the walk and thoughtful benches are placed for tired legs and maybe a bit of contemplation; either this little fella followed me around for most of the walk or there are lot of robins on the estate; Albert had this miniature fortress made for his children to play with their toy soldiers; the royal pair may not have approved of the view we had from the beach with supertankers in the Solent and the Spinnaker Tower dominating the skyline behind it. As an aside, the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth in the distance is 170m (560 ft) high and a Mecca for abseiling. The oldest person in the world to abseil was Doris Long, MBE, who aged 101 years and 55 days abseiled down the Spinnaker Tower on 12th July 2015 breaking the Guinness World Record. She abseiled from 92.96m (305 ft). Maybe her majesty might have approved of that? Totland Bay When we were planning our trip to the Isle of Wight we had several priorities for our accommodation: it had to have great sea views, somewhere not too far from the ferry destination so that the long mainland drive would be mitigated and Totland Bay was reputed to have splendid sunsets for photography. We chose the penthouse surmounting the building at Pilots Point for all those reasons and also because it had its own parking on the promenade as mentioned above. I had eagerly loaded my VERY heavy camera bag and tripod into the car at home in Oxfordshire and was excited to record some of these legendary sunsets. I stupidly hadn't reckoned with the fact that we were headed towards midwinter and the sun in the UK rises and sets in the South, not the East and West as it does in midsummer in Oxfordshire. Rookie error in extremis. Our first sunset was happening on our arrival and it was taking place behind the headland that forms the Southern side of Totland Bay and also hides the Needles. We consoled ourselves with the compensation that a local, highly-rated restaurant was a hundred yards away with gorgeous views across the sea and I had had visions of sitting in a window table with a glass of wine or beer drinking it all in. Lunches and suppers would also be consumed there during our week's stay ... I stumbled across there on the second evening we were there and, even though the place was open, all the window tables were roped off. Not much of a view to be had then. Not much local beer either with only the ubiquitous Doom Bar and London Pride waiting to be hand-pulled. The original of the latter (Chiswick to be precise) is kind of obvious from its name and the cask version of the former emanates from Rock in Cornwall. I chose the Pride as the lesser of the two bland beverages and it was well-kept and would probably had been great if I'd been able to sip it overlooking the sea. We had supper there a day or so later. The food and service was competent but nothing exciting so we resorted to the car to take us further afield. This turned out to be a good thing because we ended up, inter alia, at at least two other venues with delicious food, friendly service and local brews. More of this later. So please forgive me for the somewhat less-than exciting sunsets below but I had to get some pics from our penthouse eerie.         Above (l-r, top-bottom): Bournemouth 9 miles across the English Channel in the fading light; our "local" restaurant; this boat has been "resting" on the South side of Totland Bay for more than 3 years[7]; three pictures justifying staying in Totland Beach to photograph the sunset; two pictures in the opposite direction of Totland Pier (closed) in the fading sun, the latter with Hurst Castle in the background; a couple of seagoing boats at the opposite end of the spectrum; the English Channel coastline down to Anvil Point 19 miles away with Bournemouth in the middle. Th significance of Hurst Castle[8] in the background of the 4th to last pic above is that it sticks out on a promontory from the English mainland and forms the boundary between the Solent[9] and the English Channel and was part of the marine defence from the South during war times starting from 1544. Dimbola and surrounds - Freshwater Bay If I had to choose two places that affected me most on the Isle of Wight it would be Osborne House and Freshwater Bay but it was the latter that gave me goosebumps, on more than one occasion. The first sighting of the Tennyson Park headland chalk cliffs in the sunlight (further above) and the Dimbola Museum. Not just the Julia Margaret Cameron photography, although that was the main part of it but also the bonus rooms of posters and pictures from the 1968-70 Isle of Wight Festivals which culminated in Afton Down/Freshwater Bay with half a million people (some estimates claimed it was as high as 800,000)[10]. The circumstances of Jimi Hendrix's death, who played in the 1970 event, are also goosebump material.  Above (l-r, top-bottom): the beginning of Julia Margaret's career; Shan by Mark; Julia Margaret's early equipment; Mark by Shan. I had first encountered Julia Margaret at the photography museum at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire where they have a photography museum primarily dedicated to Henry Fox Talbot who created the first photographic negative there in 1835 but also had a section dedicated to Ms Cameron. Over the years a schism developed between Julia Margaret and other photographic pioneers who saw her photographs as blurry and scratchy while they were striving for technical perfection. Art vs. technology, basically and, for me, give me painterly photos every time. Any photographic enthusiasts should visit Dimbola to experience the beauty and reality of her work. Shan and I attempted to emulate her style by snapping each other by using some frames and soft-focus screens on loan to the Dimbola from the V&A museum [11]. And look for the portraits of Alfred, Lord Tennyson whose Farringford estate was not much more than a stone's throw from Dimbola. It is open to the public at certain times but not when we visited in November. Just go there. If you can't, a little taste of the gorgeousness of her work can be found on line [12] ... come back and tell me her work is ruined by scratches and soft-focus. If you happen to make it to Dimbola and Freshwater Bay, it would be a shame not to visit the little thatched St Agnes church just up the road and top it off with lunch at the Piano Café for some unique food and local craft beer[14]. A walk down to the beach and a quick exploration of Fort Redoubt[13] will work off the calories and place another brick in the wall of England's South Coast defences against marauding navies.  Above (l-r, top-bottom): St Agnes church; church window; salty sea dog from Dimbola?; some proper beer available at the Piano Café - fresh with hints of grapefruit. Isle of Wight roundup Having imagined that the Isle of Wight was pretty flat, just with chalk cliffs, we were pleasantly surprised to find it undulating and sporting some of the prettiest countryside in England. Without the Pennines. There is a lot of open countryside with handsome small villages and forestry, much of it belonging to the National Trust. Yarmouth itself is a pretty, handsome small town and has most of the amenities one would wish for when visiting the island, including a substantial yacht harbour and, of course, the ferry terminal. There seems to be plenty of hospitality (there certainly was in November) and a particular small gem is The Gossips Cafe at the entrance to the handsome pier with views along the NW Coast and the edge of West Cowes almost 10 miles away. In the other direction is a clear view of Hurst Castle[8]. In between Yarmouth and West Cowes are the village of Boulder, tumbling down to the sea, and a swathe of National Trust forestry, trisected by the Newtown River and the Clamerkin Brook. These waterways provide inland refuge from the Solent. It is definitely worth a drive from Parkhurst via Noke Common and Newtown and swinging back on to the A3054 at Shalfleet. Shalfleet sits at the top of the navigable part of a tributary of the Newtown River and has some delights of its own, not the least of which is the New Inn, which does a great Sunday lunch and cask local beer on tap. The area along the West Coast from Yarmouth to Freshwater Bay (via the Needles) and bounded by the Yar River in the East boasts a combination of breathtaking views and well-heeled coastal houses offering accommodation while still managing to retain a mostly rural environment. Much of this is discussed earlier in this article but deserves a mini roundup. Above (l-r, top-bottom): coastal houses boast a typical style and many of them offer accommodation; Fort Redoubt[15] boasts some modern accommodation while perched on a network of underground tunnels, one of which can be spotted on the left peeping out from the cliff; two views of the top end of the Causeway Lake (a tributary of the Newtown River that flows into the Solent) taken from the Newtown slipway; a random trimaran parked close to the slipway; two views near the source of another tributary of the Newtown River, the Caul Bourne[16], the second picture denoting the end of its navigability; there once was a mill on the river, now a house; the New Inn at Shalfleet. Above (l-r): the Shalfleet area is part of a vast coastal forest across the top of the Isle of Wight; the New Inn was one of the few places we visited that served local island beer; possibly the best chicken and leek pies you'll ever eat with mushy peas and chips to match. The Island Brewery, home of Wight Christmas cask beer (pics above) and Yachtsman's Ale (pics below) are made at Dinglers Farm near Shalfleet. It seems there's a lot more going on in the middle of the island in winter than the renowned popular coastal towns such as Shanklin. Getting back to Yarmouth. The little port is situated on the North coast at the mouth of the River Western Yar (referred to as theYar), whose source allegedly lies something around 300 yards from the South Coast of the island. This makes one wonder if the bit of the island West of o the Yar might just drift off one day to form another island (the WIoW, perhaps?). In the middle of the Yar is a pretty stretch of water named by some as the Western Yar Lake and has one of the few crossings between EIoW and WIoW known as The Causeway (the others being the A3045, the A3055 and Blackbridge Road). This causeway lies just down a steep narrow road from the WIoW pub, the Red Lion, where we''d hoped have lunch on the Sunday but was full. A serendipitous phone call then allowed us to slip across the causeway to nab one of the last tables at the New Inn in Shalfleet! What welcoming staff ... it helps to know one's local stuff on the Isle. We left the island on the ferry from Yarmouth temporarily sated but, even now as I attempt this blog, various reasons to go back there keep intruding in my thoughts.  Above (l-r, top-bottom): some things on Yarmouth are just quaint; the handsome pair offers views in many directions from East to West, with the former being the coast line towards Cowes, and the latter one of many views of Hurst Castle; a glass of local beer in The Gossips Cafe; Waiting for the return ferry to Lymmington; the view back from the ferry highlighting how narrow the gap is between The Needles and Hurst Castle. So not too easy to slip into the Solent from the West! As an endnote when describing our choice of access to the Isle of Wight, various friends, including Rob and Vince, were eager to point out that this boat was the "Most expensive ferry per mile in the world"! Thanks guys but it was fun and relatively painless. Last Gasp Geek Stuff I'd gone to the Isle of Wight armed with photographic equipment including my: Nikon D750, 4 lenses, a large flash and battery pack, tripod; Panasonic DC-DZ95C with built in Leica Zoom; trusty iPhone 15 Pro. It kind of begs the question: "What is the best camera for travel photography?" And the answer: "The one you have to hand when you most need it!" All 4 pictures below were taken when all I had on me was my iPhone.     Above (top-bottom): a few days of 40 mph+ winds brought some scary waves to batter the promenade; three pictures that speak for themselves but all relied on the camera (iPhone) on hand at the time. Sure, if pin point accuracy in focussing is an important priority (for birds for eg.) then the sophisticated kit is the business, so who's going to buy me a mirrorless Nikon Z for Christmas for those occasional situations when I most need it during the few months left at my disposal? [Endnotes]:
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