Back now from our holiday on the Isle of Wight. The laptop did have internet access using my mobile ‘phone for the connection but I forgot the (different) USB lead to connect the laptop and camera! Which is why I didn’t do a posting from the island because I wanted to include a picture or two. Here’s the first picture, Bembridge Beach, taken about 11:00 am, temperature around 21C yet hardly a soul in sight – this is why I love the Isle of Wight.

Busier, but with superb soft sand is the eastern end of Ryde beach where there’s even a free car park!

Here’s something bus related.

We went to the Garlic Festival on Saturday. It may be called a garlic festival but it’s more like a county show with lots of varied exhibitions, displays and stands. This is the back end of a bus being used to sign a petition against the IoW parliamentary constituency being split up! Here’s a video of Titan the robot who we all thought was brilliant.

Some of the arena entertainment was a bit amateurish but somehow that made it all the more entertaining, it gave the festival a ‘homely’ feel.

On Monday we went to the Ventnor Botanic Garden which is somewhere I wanted to go but didn’t expect the kids to enjoy much. Got that one wrong! They thoroughly enjoyed it. I only took one photo! Here it is, a leaf!

We also had a day out at Osborne House which the kids didn’t enjoy that much.

There is one other place worth a mention, The Four Seasons Inn at Wroxall. We’d yet to find a pub during our last 3 holidays on the island where the food was anything other than bought in and reheated mass catering food. Regardless of what they may advertise, in general, pub food on the island isn’t good. But this time we came across The Four Seasons! A real pub atmosphere, a greeting the moment you walked in the door and decent food which really was made and cooked on the premises. Reasonable prices too.

And this was home for the 8 days.

It’s that time again :-) As per last year we’re off to the Isle of Wight tomorrow at some ungodly hour – it’s the only way to get a half reasonable price to cross the most expensive piece of water (£ per mile) in the world. The caravan is packed and attached to the car so there’s no need to hitch up in the dark. I managed to set up my mobile ‘phone as a modem to my daughter’s laptop and at home all seems to work well. If it’s the same in a field on the Isle of Wight there may be a progress report on the week.

A regular commentator, Jeff, wrote a couple of days ago “You must have too much time to spare on the 68 route !!!!!!! only joking, like the photos keep them coming”. Here are a couple more dedicated to him! What are these blue flowers? As you can see from the close-up photo the blue flowers are mixed in with some cabbage, some yellow flowers and what’s not in the close-up, but is evenly spread in the field, maize. The field was bare earlier in the year having been ploughed and prepared and then this mixture of plants started to grow. If you look carefully at the close-up you can see soil between the plants and none of the usual weeds you’d see in a field not deliberately planted for a purpose. It’s a huge attractor of butterflies and bees but there are no hives in the field. Any ideas about this field?

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

The number 11 route in Winchester is a 12 minute loop from the Bus Station around a residential area. The area is mixed housing, some ex-council houses and some older, turn of the century, terraced houses. What strikes me every time I drive the loop is the number of disabled parking bays relative to the number of homes. I can’t think of anywhere else where the density of disabled parking bays to homes is so great. Here’s the first couple of hundred yards of the loop, click the ahead arrow and just look at the disabled parking spaces (it may be clearer if you click on View Larger Map.

View Larger Map

Back in June I posted this picture of a hedge covered in the webs of the Small Ermine Moth.

Under the protection of the webs the caterpillars strip every leaf off the plant to the point where it would seem impossible for the plant to survive. However, only 6 weeks later the hedge recovers! Here’s a picture I took today of the same piece of hedgerow. Sorry about the poor quality, it was taken using my mobile ‘phone as I didn’t have my camera with me.