Friday 31 May 2013

The Freshwater Way

Today was beautiful and my person is on holiday from work so we went for another walk.  This time we went over to the west of the island, to walk the Freshwater Way.  We usually start in Yarmouth but it was very busy there with a festival so we started in the middle and did a figure of 8 walk.  More about the festival in a minute.


We started on the causeway at Freshwater, this picture is from another day but it is the same spot.  Then we walked down the disused railway to Yarmouth, you have seen me there before too.  Just to remind you.


It is woody and there are trees to climb. 

Near to Yarmouth there is an old watermill which we belive belongs to the family of A J P Taylor, the historian, but I don't know this for sure.



We got to Yarmouth, you have seen me there before but it was different today because they had the Old Gaffers' Festival.  We are not islanders and it took us a few years to find out what this was about.  As far as we understand it gaffers are a type of old wooden boat and they gather together at Yarmouth at the end of May each year to chat about old times.  They looked very pretty with their flags flying.


After leaving Yarmouth we went along a wooded path.


and then a field path


then more woods and fields until we got back to the causeway at Freshwater where we looked at this interesting church and grave yard, it is All Saints church.


When we do the walk the normal way, starting at Yarmouth, we only visit the causeway once but doing it this way you meet it three times.

We decided to have our sandwiches at the reed bed by the causeway.


We could see a view when we got up on the wall.


The hill in the background is Tennyson Down I have shown you close up pictures of the Tennyson memorial up there before.

After lunch we carried on.  After a little bit of walking on the road we got to a big field with horses.  We had to cross that and were making for the golf course. You can see the buildings of the golf course in the distance here.


Now baboons aren't silly when we got to the golf course we just kept walking fast, golf balls can be painful to the head and we weren't hanging around.

We climbed down to Freshwater Bay.


I had a disappointment there!  There is a cafe called Cafe Delicius at Freshwater Bay and I would have had tea there.  Sadly I have been forced to give this cafe a very low baboon rating.  It does have nice cakes and a great view of the sea, but it is never open when we are there, even on a sunny day in half-term week it was closed.  Very disappointing.  If you are ever at Freshwater Bay go to the Dandelion Cafe in the walking holidays hostel, it will be open and they do nice scones.  Sadly we didn't stop today.

We carried on through a nature reserve.


and, after a little bit of walking on a quiet road and through another pretty path, we reached the End of the Line cafe at Freshwater.  Now this cafe never disappoints!  Nearly always open and great cakes and lunches.

 
This picture is when I went there with Jens on his visit in April.  We stopped there briefly to buy some of their delightful date and walnut slices, for breakfast tomorrow.  We always give this cafe a 5 out of 5 baboon rating.

After that we walked down more of the disused railway (see where the cafe got its name), back to the causeway, where we had left the car.  It was a lovely walk on a beautiful day.




4 comments:

  1. Nom nom, sownds delishush an wat a pritty walk an views. Thanks you fur sharing *hugs an purrs*

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a pretty pawsome walk, Kolo! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I do be enjoyin your walkin series my pal....pawhaps we could innerest the BBC in doin in on the telly....is better than wot they got on there now

    ReplyDelete

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