Saturday was a special event day at the Isle of Wight Steam Railway – Steam trains and a Cider / Cheese festival. We decided to stick with the theme of public transport and arrived after a couple of hours at the main steam railway station of Haverstreet.
The Isle of Wight seems to have a reasonable bus service and we caught the number 8 bus after a 10 minute walk from the campsite. At Sandown we switched to the regular railway and travelled the short distance to Smallbrook junction. This is at one end of the steam railway line and just a short walk from the mainline station to the steam railway.
Our first steam train of the day arrived a little later and took us (via a trip to the other end of the line, Wootton) to the main station at Havenstreet.
Entry to the Cider and Cheese festival was complimentary with a train ticket. A very nice choice of cheeses was available for the cheese platters.
There was a similar choice of Ciders although I made some pretty interesting choices. Maybe I’ll stick to Sandford Orchards “Devon Red” if there’s a next time! Service was disappointingly slow, given we only had a couple of hours at the festival.
On the journey back, we stopped at the Driftwood bar on the beach at Sandown and then ate Fish’n’Chips nearby in Lake.
*****
Sunday was a quiet day, with roast dinner at our local inn, The Pointer Inn. Highly recommended.
*****
Monday we drove to Ventnor and visited the Botanical gardens there. This has it’s own micro-climate which keeps the temperature some 5 degrees higher than should be expected. The gardens are well laid out and it was a lovely day to enjoy a picnic and wander around the botanical gardens. Weather was warm enough for a late afternoon BBQ.
