We were up early, hoping to make an early start but our charming landlady liked to chat over breakfast but was very helpful and gave us some home made flapjacks and a banana for our journey, so we didn't get away until nearly 9am. It was a miserable drizzly morning and it was the first time we had cycled in the rain so we couldn't grumble. We left our b&b to join route 23 just a couple of roads away. We now had become experts at looking for blue 23 arrows...

We knew that cycling across the island would take longer than we planned so we left at 8am in order to catch the 10.30 ferry. We knew that getting out of Ventnor would involve the inevitable push uphill, but apart from the school buses the traffic wasn't too bad. We avoided the disastrous "sunshine route" and took a slightly longer route to join the cycle route 23 which goes from Sandown to Reading. I don't know why anyone would want to cycle from Sandown...

Ok so we planned to see the island by bike, but the round Island route is incredibly hilly just getting out of Ventnor is a major hill climb and no way could we get round in a day. So today we cheated and got a Rover bus ticket which allowed us to visit all the places we wanted to see. We travelled through Yarmouth to Alum Bay. We quickly moved away from the theme park at Alum Bay and went on to The Needles, we walked to Freshwater Bay went back to Newport and th...

We woke very late and decided to have a morning on foot rather than on saddle. We explored the delightful Steephill Cove, the coastal footpath and the Botanical Gardens. Due to subsidence the coastal footpath has been diverted through the Botanical Gardens so we thought we would take the opportunity to visit them even though lots of signs tried to persuade the coastal footpath walkers that they should visit the paying kiosk, we did a quick tour and got back onto...

After a good night 's sleep we pulled the curtains to see the sun ,something we hadn't seen the previous day. We enjoyed a very healthy breakfast which I didn't think was included in the Premier Inn price but no one seemed to want to take our money. The restaurant seemed to be full of families with school children which we assume we're being housed in the Premier Inn as it's the cheapest B&B around. We were probably mistaken for one of these f...