Welcome to new readers!
Over the past couple of months, I have been posting a photo-diary of our cycling holiday last August on the Isle of Wight -- in serial/instalment form. Today's post covers Day 7 and is the next to last in the series.
If you wish to 'catch up', here are links to previous instalments:
Our destination on Day 7 was the Shipwreck Centre and Maritime Museum in Arreton, in the centre of the island.
We cycled a mixture of roads and the Sunshine Trail, with quiet, bucolic views such as this:
Once in Arreton, we found the "Old Village" on the northern outskirts.
Essentially, the Old Village is a tourist attraction. When you leave the road, you're in an enormous car park -- this is unpaved and ridden with potholes!
All the "attractions" are in small retail units designed to look like old-fashioned shops. These are laid out roughly around a central square with a few higgledy-piggledy alleyways just to add to the "olde world" feel.
Which of the "old" signs and furniture are genuine? Hard to say, but they are interesting, nonetheless.
A village stock!
The Old Penny Arcade houses an amazing collection of old arcade games.
More old machinery... anyone know what an "oil cake breaker" is?
The Shipwreck Centre is at the top end of the Old Village.
I confess, I expected the contents to consist mainly of tourist-y souvenirs and cheap tat -- and indeed there was a bit of that in the shop part of the building when we first entered. However, the Maritime Museum is overwhelmingly full of all variety of "finds" from sunken ships. This is all the private collection of one salvage hunter, Martin Woodward. The displays include contemporary accounts of individual lost ships, their subsequent discoveries and recoveries. You really get a sense of what these ships were like, the people on them (crew and passengers), the conditions they sailed through, the storm or disaster that brought them down, the fear and uncertainty about their fates, and then -- usually decades, even generations later -- the circumstances surrounding their re-discovery (often completely by surprise) and attempts made to lift the wreckage from the seabed floor and/or salvage some of the contents.
Mr Woodward has made it his life's work to research lost wreckages. I got the impression that his efforts were usually driven by curiosity, not greed... although there are undoubtedly a number of very valuable items in his collection!
Here are a few photos of just some of the items on display --
After we left the Museum, we did not return to the tourist-y Old Village but instead turned towards Arreton itself, which contains some lovely old houses and cottages and an unusual church.
We had lunch in the White Lion pub back on the main road.
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| Egg and gammon with brie, with massive quantities of vegetables. |
We returned home via a different combination of roads and segments of the Sunshine Trail. Another really enjoyable day out.
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