We made our headquarters at Ryde and sallied out after breakfast and after lunch each day, invariably returning for the night.
The beauties of the Isle of Wight are many and varied, with all the charms of sea and shore. For a literary shrine it has Tennyson's Freshwater and the Tennyson Beacon high up on the crest of the downs overlooking the Needles, Freshwater Bay, and the busy traffic of the English Channel, where the ships make landward to signal the observers at St. Catherine's Point.
Cowes and "Cowes week" are preeminent annual events in society's periodical swing around the circle.
The real development of Cowes, the home of the Royal Yacht Squadron, has been the evolution of week-end yachting in the summer months. City men, and jaded legislators, held to town by the Parliamentary duties of a long summer session, rush down to Southampton every Saturday and each steps off his train or motor-car on to the deck of his yacht, and then, after a spin westward to the Needles or eastward to the Nab or Warner Lightship, soothed by the lapping of the waters, and refreshed by the pure sea air, returns on the Monday to face again the terrors of London heat and "fag."
Taken all in all, we found the Isle of Wight the most enjoyable region of its area in all England. It is quite worth the trouble of crossing from the mainland with one's automobile in order to do it thoroughly; for what one wants is green fields and pastures new and a breadth of sea and sky.
Chapter III
Land's End To John O'Groats
