Wight On!

Got home from another incredible weekend Sunday, this time spent on the Isle of Wight, a small island off the southern coast of England. Fulbrighter Rebecca and I bought a Groupon deal to visit Isle of Wight several months ago and when our trip was approaching, I asked people at work if they'd ever been. Those that had all told me how it was really pretty, really small, and sort of like a 1950s time warp. Rebecca and I certainly weren't sure what to expect but nonetheless were excited. And besides, Rebecca's become my weekend warrior travel buddy, and our weekends are always full of adventures. This trip to Isle of Wight was no different! I even crossed two important things off my England Must Do list: meet a highland cow and check out a boot sale!

Friday afternoon, I headed straight to the train station to catch the first of three trains that would take me down to South Hampton, where I would meet Rebecca for our ferry ride over to the Isle of Wight. Hoping on a ferry definitely reminded me of my beloved Pacific Northwest! We barely made the ferry, but once we were on it, we had plenty of time to sit back, relax with the views of the sunset, drink a tasty pear cider and plan out our weekend. Fabulous start to the weekend!

We picked up this little magazine on the ferry and used
it all weekend to travel around the island.

After we arrived on the island, we had to drive to another town, Shanklin, to check into the hotel. Shaklin is a super cute little village, so after checking in, we walked up to the village and had dinner in a pub called The Crab. Dinner was great, and there was even a live band!

Arriving on the Isle of Wight

Shanklin

The Crab pub

The next morning, we headed out after a nice English breakfast to road trip the island. We had a few things in mind of what we wanted to see but were also open to stop wherever we fancied along the way. The island is small, but still takes a while to drive around simply because the roads are so windy and narrow. Though slightly unnerving, the roads were absolutely gorgeous. Rebecca is also a fabulous driver, much better than I would be, so I felt really safe!

Beautiful county roads (this is a two-lane road, by the way)

Roadside view

Huh?

The first stop of our road trip day turned out to be the most important stop for me. Why? Because it was at the beautiful Garlic Farm that I finally met my first highland cow! We had seen a small photo of a highland cow on the magazine advert, but we weren't sure if they would actually be there. I was trying to keep my cool, though, and not get too excited. You see, I have been hell bent on seeing a highland cow for the last ten months, but the darn cows have eluded me all year! I even took a special trip up to Scotland in February to go see a highland cow called Hamish at a tourist trap shop, but when we got there, Hamish had been sent away for the winter. So you can understand why I was hesitant to get too excited. Upon arrival though, we found all sorts of exciting things, like this friendly peacock roaming the car park area.

He walked right up to me!

He didn't want Rebecca to get out of the car!

The Garlic Farm is a huge farm, specializing in garlic but with other crops as well. They have a beautiful property that you can walk all around, an amazing gift shop with products made from their crops, and an educational center where you can learn about garlic growing.

The Garlic Farm actually does smell like garlic.

The shop

We stopped in the shop for some information about the property, bought a map, then set out for a nice long walk. The girl in the shop told us yes, they did have highland cows, and I could hardly wait to see them!

Very lovely farm!

And then, over the hedge, Rebecca spotted the cows!!!

My reaction to having seen the cows over the hedge.

We made our way around the farm and finally made it to the field with the cows! It was SO AMAZING! The cows were really funny. Only one was near the fence at first, and he didn't really know what to think of us but seemed interested enough to stick around. Then another cow came trotting over to see what was going on. We spent about a half hour looking at them, talking to them and taking their pictures. We even stuck our hands out and got some cold cow nose "kisses!" It was glorious and even more special than I had dreamed. To me, highland cows are perfect! Big, sweet, scruffy. I love them! Here's a few pictures:

Our first good look at those beautiful beasts! How ironic that I had to come
all the way south to Isle of Wight to see these highland beauties! 

Pretty coo (as the Scots would say)

BABY!

Oh, who am I kidding. Here's about 10,000 highland cow photos for you and a couple vids!

LOVE that nose! 

I really hated to say goodbye, but eventually we had to move on. I know it may sound a little odd, but I honestly feel so incredibly lucky to have had this great opportunity to not only see but actually meet a couple of lovely highland cows! One more experience to tick off my UK Must See List.

We headed back up the main part of the farm, taking a bit of different route back so we could see some more gorgeous views:

As we approached the shop, still a little high of the euphoria from our cow encounter, we couldn't believe it when another incredible opportunity was waiting for us. A bird rescue group was at the farm, educating visitors about owls and other birds of prey and raising donations. For a small donation, you could hold an owl! Heck yes! Rebecca and I were both super excited and chose an owl to hold. I picked a nice little white one and Rebecca picked a grumpy old one. :)  The owls were so cute and soft (we got to pet them!).

Of course we had to hit up the gift shop after the owls, but first we stopped in at the educational center (briefly) and the loo so we could wash our hands!

Educational Center

Love that restroom sign!

After our fabulous experience at the Garlic Farm, we headed on to our next destination: a donkey sanctuary! The funny thing about the donkey sanctuary was that Rebecca and I heard about it on our weekend trip to Eastbourne when we attended an improve show where the setting ended up being the Isle of Wight. In the show, the characters visited the donkey sanctuary, so when we saw it in the island magazine, we just had to go. The sanctuary is a pretty neat place! The have more than fifty donkeys of different species as well as some ponies and horses. At the sanctuary, these unwanted animals are cared for, loved and sometimes even adopted! We had a good time walking around the property and petting the donkeys. The day was quickly turning into an animal extravaganza!

Our next destination was The Needles, which are some huge, chalk cliffs beside the ocean. We pulled our little map and had a look at where to go and what we could find along the way.

We ended up stopping at a little village called Godshill where we walked around, checked out a few shops and then had a nice scone and tea at a 16th century building! One of the shops we stopped in had a bunch of little ferries and lots of gnomes in a back garden. In fact, they had a whole gnome village! What a crazy little place!

The gnome village 

The gnome village

This 16th century building is now a shop and a tea room. We just
couldn't pass it by so we stopped for a scone and tea!

Next it was time to head out to The Needles for our last big adventure of the day! The Needles has a cheesy little amusement park at the top of the hill where you can go on rides and buy a bunch of crappy souvenirs. But if you walk down 181 steps, you arrive at the beach with a great view of the cliffs. An even better view can be found by taking an inexpensive 20-minute boat ride out to the cliffs, so Rebecca and I decided we definitely needed to do that! The afternoon was cool but sunny and beautiful, and the views were amazing!

Views along the drive to The Needles

The 181 steps down to the beach

The Needles

Our boat, the Ramblin' Rose

The famous colored sand cliffs

We came back and sat on the beach for a while,
soaking up the sun and playing in the rocks.  

Then it was time to climb back up...

We had planned to just take a meandering drive back to our little village but decided to stop off at Carisbrooke Castle, which dates back to 1100! We only had 45 minutes to run around the grounds before it closed, so the nice man in the gift shop let us in for free! What a deal! The castle was really neat, with lots of different buildings and a really great outer wall you can walk all the way around.

Woah! Watch out! 

Rebecca tried on some armor! 

Fierce!

We finally headed back to our hotel after the castle, and man, was my butt dragging! We had another dinner at The Crab and then just crashed in our room nice and early. It was a successful, jam-packed day of touring, and we both slept like the dead that night!

The next morning, we set out early again to try to squeeze in a few more sights before catching our 12:30 p.m. ferry. We drove through a couple seaside towns, checked out a cool, old windmill, stopped off to explore a boot sale, and did some last-minute shopping at a made-on-the-island shop.

The boot sale! Another item on my must-see list! A boot sale is like a
garage sale, but instead of setting up in your garage, sellers set up their
unwanted household treasures out of the back of their cars. A "boot" in
the UK is a car trunk! Unfortunately, I didn't find any treasures I couldn't
live without, but I still enjoyed perusing!

The rain hit just as we were getting ready to hop on our ferry. Perfect timing!

Rebecca and I really did have a fabulous weekend on Isle of Wight! I was able to cross lots of experiences off my list, including the all important highland coos! This weekend made me realize just how much I'm going to miss England. It may be small, but every town is so different, so beautiful, so full of history and interesting things to discover. I've really fallen in love with this country!