Today we went to the Isle of  Wight . It is an island off the south coast of England. It was also the home of several of my ancestors in about 1700. We had the names of four towns where they lived.

We caught a ferry about 8 miles south of our hotel. It is a 4 mile ferry ride each way. We had to go on line the night before and purchase our tickets. 80 pounds or about $120 for the round trip. We were questioning if we had to have reservations but it is good we did. It was a beautiful sunny day and the island is a beach resort get-a-way for many of the English. The harbors are just full private sail boats. 

There was a big market going on that drew thousands of cars. The island town of Yarmouth, where the ferry landed was jammed.

After getting out of the town we found our first little town. It was again a small farm town down several single lane roads. 

There we found another wonderful old church. In the second town there was an old woman doing flower arrangements in that church. She was a new comer to the town, having lived there only 40 years, but she was a wealth of information about the area going all the way back to Roman days.

The third town, though small, was too newly developed to even find the old church. The fourth town had another great old church.

We drove around the entire coast line of the island. It was probably about 30 miles. The southern part was really pretty. There was little traffic there, some cute beach towns, and the road was fun to drive.

We got back to catch the 5:00 pm ferry back to the mainland. We stopped at a pub on the way back to the hotel for a dinner of pub food.