The advantage in writing my blogs days after the event is that I can make corrections or insert new things we have learned. Fort example, last week we were in North West Herefordshire. If you ever visit, we can save you some embarrassment. They don't pronounce the letter "o" in the beginning of names such as Leominster and Woebley. So they are Leminster and Webley. How Wooloomooloo would suffer under the Herefords.

Where are we today. Oh! That's right, we are on the ferry to the Isle of White with our first destinations being Carisbrook Castle (I thought it should be in Scotland) and the Needles at Alum Bay.

Boarding the ferry was a doddle. How well managed. They simply requested my name at the gates. Checked the rego of the car against my name and directed me to a waiting line. Around ten waiting lines with cars of different sizes. Time to board, we're signalled forward and up the boarding ramp. First car on board. We're on the second deck. There are three decks. All passengers wait in car till all cars loaded and then exit and climb the stairs to whichever level you want to sit. We go to the top of course and find seats at the rear. It's out of the wind and we can watch Southampton receded into the distance.

It's a little squalish on the crossing and when one cars alarm goes off, dozens of others go off in sympathy. All is quiet again when everyone returns to their cars and we disembark in an orderly fashion.

It wasn't long, but could have been faster but for Sheila who lost her way or was seasick. She couldn't give directions quickly enough and we had to do Ueys and drive arounds to finally find Carisbrook Castle.

I could bore you to snores with a history of the castle, however I'm short on time. It began as an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in the 6th century, became an Anglo-Saxon burh (or fortress/fortified settlement), built to provide a refuge against Viking raids around 1,000. The Normans converted it into a Mott and Bailey. Gotta love Mott and Baileys, I do. It was extended and reshaped over the next 600 years and at the outset of the Civil War in 1642 the castle passed into the hands of the Parliamentary forces. Its principal use until 1660 was as a prison for important Royalists, the most notable inmate being Charles I in 1647-8. Later it was used as a prison for his youngest son and for his daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who died here in 1650, at the age of 14.

Charles I came to the island in November 1647 after he had escaped from house arrest at Hampton Court, in the hope that he might be able to act more freely. But he quickly found that he was again a prisoner, this time in the castle. He was housed with some ceremony in the hall range, attended by members of his own household. An enclosure on the east side of the castle was converted into a bowling green for him.

Charles made two unsuccessful attempts to escape, in March and May 1648. In September he was removed to Newport for unsuccessful negotiations with Parliament, and then by stages to London and his execution in Whitehall on 30 January 1649.

We weren't much interested in or had the time to go inside. Ches rested her hip and Drew, Keith and I walked the outside. There appeared to be two dry moats surrounding the walls. You would have had to clamber in and out of both under fire from the walls to even get to with ten metres of the base of the walls. Carrying a ladder to scale the walls would have been just too much. We decided not to try.

Lots of wildflowers and butterflies made it a pleasant walk.

Time for lunch. We googled and found a pub with a spectacular view … if you could withstand the cool wind. We couldn't and were tucked away inside in a quiet lounge. Despite the fact that all the other rooms etc were packed, we received the best of customer service and quite good quality food. Our waitress smiled all the time, she was prompt and always there when we needed her. She checked back regularly. What's going on? CUSTOMER SERVICE. Really good customer service.

Satiated, it's on to Alum Bay and the Needles. I'm guessing some will recognise The Needles as familiar from TV coverage of the Admiral Cup and Fastnet Yacht races. They used to get a lot of coverage in the 60s and 70s. As for Alum Bay, I'd never heard of it until I did advance research. It was named the Needles because of the fourth column called Lots Wife that collapsed in 1764.

I can't justify expending much in the way of descriptions of either of these spectacular sites. Then again, how could I not mention the horror that is the carpark and fairground at the end of the road. I'd thought that we could drive out to the headland as it is a N.T. property. Not so. You would have to walk out there. The carpark is L6.00 with a L2.00 discount for N.T. members. Surrounding the carpark is the fairground. Merry go round, spinning cups, put-put golf, coconut shies, clear plastic child prisons floating on a pool, and the usual. There is also a chairlift to take us down to the beach.

I love heights. I love it when a chairlift goes from horizontal to vertical, to drop down in front of the cliff. I concentrated on photographing the amazing views. The wind was howling and the cliff was dressed in baseball caps. I'd forgotten to wear mine so grateful to only end up with sunburn.

On the beach we found we were sheltered from the wind and it was quite warm. Not only are the Needles a great view from here, so are the chalk cliffs and the coloured sand cliffs that stretch out both sides of the chairlift. Pictures do tell a thousand words, so I'll post an album rather than go on here. I did however discover an interesting explanation about the formation of the cliffs and their history, so I'll add that on at the end of the blog … as usual. I'll finish by saying that the needles way back when used to be a chalk formation that extended across the channel to link up with Old Harry Rocks and Lulworth Cove.

There were hundreds down on the beach, many swimming. What they weren't doing was crowding the coloured sand cliffs, so I was able to photograph from every angle to my hearts content. We spent more time down there than we'd anticipated. Had to drag ourselves away. Drew had purchased a combination of tickets to make the L32.00 chairlift fare cheaper. It meant he had L4.00 worth of tickets left, so the challenge was to identify a family who he could give them to. Pardon my preposition.

Mission achieved we decided to make our way the 25 minutes or so to our accommodation. What I didn't hear was Drew's plea for afternoon tea. He gets ugly when he's hungry. As I say, I didn't hear his request but I did hear his complaints when I sailed by a tearoom. OMG, most of them close at 4:00pm. Several aborted attempts later we tossed up in Freshwater Bay where there is a café to avoid at all costs, the Surf Shack. Maybe it's to be avoided this close to 4:00pm. If there ever was any customer service, it had been used up or sold.

The beach was lovely. Sandy even, with striking chalk headlands.

Our accommodation was only five miles inland but accessed by ever decreasing in width roads. The last mile was only wide enough for one car. I mean one car. The bracken on either side scraped the sides of the car. If there was to be an oncoming car, we'd have to backup at least half a mile to one of two possible laybys. We've been here 4 days and so far so good. More about our accommodation ….. next blog.

The N.T. website says: "The Needles' pointed shape is a result of their unusual geology. The strata have been so heavily folded during the Alpine Orogeny that the chalk is near vertical. This chalk outcrop runs through the centre of the Island from Culver Cliff in the east to the Needles in the west, and then continues under the sea to the Isle of Purbeck, forming Ballard Cliff (near Swanage), Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door. At Old Harry Rocks (east of Studland and north of Swanage) these strata lines moving from horizontal to near vertical can be seen from the sea.

The shape of the lost Lot's Wife stone column, recorded as collapsing in 1764, is subject to some speculation. A drawing of The Needles by Dutch landscape artist Lambert Doomer (1624-1700), made in 1646, depicts a rock formation with much stouter shape than that shown in Isaac Taylor's 1759 "one inch" map of Hampshire. The Doomer etching is contained in Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem (published ca. 1662), which is in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. It is not clear from this drawings what transpired and whether Doomer was exercising artistic license. Doomer's painting shows three stacks when there should have been four, prior to the collapse of Lot's Wife.

Just off the end of The Needles formation is the Shingles, a shifting shoal of pebbles just beneath the waves. The Shingles is approximately three miles in length. Many ships have been wrecked on the Shingles and three notable vessels on The Needles themselves: HMS Assurance in the 18th century, HMS Pomone in the 19th, and SS Varvassi in 1947."