There’s always something interesting to see. I went for a walk when I first woke up this morning, walking around the area where we’re staying in Totland. Sunny but a very cold breeze blowing. This is part of a wall of a building, now called The Lookout – part of a housing estate – built in 1863 and there’s narrow slots in the wall to look out over the Solent to see if their enemies are coming. The past is all around us everywhere. Why don’t we ever learn from our pasts?

Nearby in another house garden is this….. A plastic pink little tree with a gnome statue underneath! Maybe beauty is found in different places and different ways for different people? After all, the gnome does “Welcome” us.

Then I walked down to the nearest beach. Very different to Perth beaches! You can’t easily see it, but there are people in the ocean, swimming – without a wetsuit! There are lots of different ways of doing brave things.

Philip and I had a quiet morning at Pam and Nathan’s house, sitting outside in the sunshine with jumpers on and reading. When Pam came home and we had lunch together, she drove us out through rolling countryside on narrow roads with high hedges either side of the road to the nearby Battery and Needles Headland. (Needles is probably the iconic Isle of Wight symbol and photo.) We walked with Molly the dog along a wide path on top of high chalk cliffs to the headland. Far down below boats zipped along on the ocean trailing a v-shaped white wake behind them.

The Battery is a relic and a ruin. The military first built big gun placements on the headland in 1874. One thing about the Victorian builders is that they rarely built just for usefulness. Mostly they also did their building with craftsmanship and elegance. But I didn’t get any photos of this to show you. This Battery was also used in World War One – mostly for surveillance and again in World War Two. Why don’t we learn from the past?

There’s also been a lighthouse here for a long time. One of the stories we read was of a lighthouse keeper’s family from the late 1800s. They had four children who when they walked to school nearly 4kms away (each way) were often roped together because if one of them was blown by the raging winds over the cliff, the other three children could pull them back up!

An old searchlight from World War Two looking out over The Needles.

But we still had higher up to go! Pam and I (and Molly) walked up a steep track through a green cathedral of over-arching tree branches to the top of what is known as Tennyson’s hill. Lord Alfred Tennyson was a famous Victorian poet who lived and walked in this area of the world. (Philip stayed in the car at the bottom of the climb.)

A gloriously exhilarating cardio workout! Wonderful views looking out far below over the little towns and farmlands, across the Solent to Dorset on the English mainland.

This is from about half-way up the hill.

And this at the top of the hill! You can’t easily see it in the photo but there’s Celtic carvings on the cross. Being on top of a hill always gives a grand perspective and if I’m looking for symbolism, there is a way forward of hope, grace, love, forgiveness through the Cross. Not in wars, battlements, guns which cycle through endlessly down through the centuries with nothing much ever changing in the human heart and condition. There’s a better and more lasting way higher up through the Cross!

We’ve had such a wonderful time on the Isle of Wight. Tomorrow we head for Heathrow in London, then on to Italy.