Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight's Landmark Attractions

The Needles are the island's defining image — three distinctive chalk stacks and a Victorian lighthouse at the far western tip of the island, most dramatically viewed from the chairlift at Alum Bay or from a boat cruise departing from Yarmouth. The Needles Landmark Attraction at the top of the chalk Downs above Alum Bay combines the chairlift down to the coloured sands beach, glass-blowing demonstrations, sweet-making and fossil hunting with the cliff-top views.

Osborne House near East Cowes is one of England's most intimate and revealing royal houses — Victoria's private retreat where she and Albert created their ideal family home, where they entertained the crowned heads of Europe and where Victoria spent her final years. The house is preserved almost exactly as it was at the time of her death in 1901 and provides an extraordinarily personal insight into Victorian royal life. The Durbar Room, created for Victoria's Diamond Jubilee to reflect her status as Empress of India, is one of the most extraordinary rooms in England.

The Isle of Wight's Natural Landscape

The island's southern chalk ridge, traversed by the Tennyson Trail and the Worsley Trail, offers some of the finest coastal walking in England. The coloured sandstone cliffs between Alum Bay and Freshwater Bay are the finest example of the island's remarkable geological diversity — 23 distinct geological formations are exposed in the island's coastal cliffs, more than in any equivalent length of coastline in the world. The island's fossil record is equally extraordinary: over 30 species of dinosaur have been found in the Wealden clay of the western Yar Valley.