The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest and second-most populous island of England. It is in the English Channel, between two and five miles off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the island has resorts that have been holiday destinations since Victorian times, and is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland and chines. The island is historically part of Hampshire, and is designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
The Solent is a strait between the Isle of Wight and Great Britain. It is about 20 miles long and varies in width between 2+1⁄2 and 5 mi, although the Hurst Spit which projects 1+1⁄2 mi (2.4 km) into the Solent narrows the sea crossing between Hurst Castle and Colwell Bay to just over 1 mi (1.6 km).
For the ship anchorage, see The Downs.
The Isle of Wight Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) on the Isle of Wight, England's largest offshore island.
The Chalk Group is the lithostratigraphic unit which contains the Upper Cretaceous limestone succession in southern and eastern England. The same or similar rock sequences occur across the wider northwest European chalk 'province'. It is characterised by thick deposits of chalk, a soft porous white limestone, deposited in a marine environment.
The River Yar on the Isle of Wight, England, rises near the beach at Freshwater Bay, on the south coast, and flows only a few miles north to Yarmouth where it meets the Solent. Most of the river is a tidal estuary. Its headwaters have been truncated by erosion of the south coast.
Devil's Dyke is a 100m deep V-shaped dry valley on the South Downs in Sussex in southern England, 5 miles (8.0 km) north-west of Brighton. It is managed by the National Trust, and is also part of the Beeding Hill to Newtimber Hill Site of Special Scientific Interest. Devil's Dyke was a major local tourist attraction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is now a popular viewpoint and site for walking, model aircraft flying and hang gliding. The South Downs Way passes the site.
Whitwell is a small village located on the south of the Isle of Wight, approximately 5 kilometres north-west of Ventnor, the village's nearest town. At the 2011 Census the appropriate civil parish was Niton and Whitwell. In addition to this, it is about five minutes away from its neighbouring small villages of Godshill and Niton, the latter of which, Whitwell forms a civil parish. According to 2001 census data, the total population of the village was 578. There is a variety of stone and thatched housing, as well as some more modern housing, the most recent of which was completed in 2006.
Compton Bay is a bay located on the southwest section of the Isle of Wight, England. Its northwestern edge is defined by the distinctive white chalk cliff of Freshwater Cliff, named after adjacent Freshwater Bay, which forms a small cove with the village of Freshwater situated just behind. Its northeastern edge is formed from the soft red and orange lower cretaceous rocks of Brook Bay, which are rapidly eroding.
Shide is a small settlement on the Isle of Wight, some of which is considered to be in the Newport conurbation.
Tennyson Down is a hill at the west end of the Isle of Wight just south of Totland. Tennyson Down is a grassy, whale-backed ridge of chalk which rises to 482 ft/147m above sea level. Tennyson Down is named after the poet Lord Tennyson who lived at nearby Farringford House for nearly 40 years. The poet used to walk on the down almost every day, saying that the air was worth 'sixpence a pint'.
Shide railway station was at Shide, on the southern fringes of Newport, Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England. It was an intermediate station on the line from Newport to Sandown, which was initially operated by the Isle of Wight Railway.
Calbourne and Shalfleet railway station, was an intermediate station of the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport Railway, incorporated in 1860, opened over a ten-month period between 1889 and 1889 and closed 65 years later. Situated between the two villages and serving a moderately populous rural area it was a "reasonably" successful station on an ultimately unprofitable line. Originally the station had a cottage style front but after absorption by the Southern a corrugated building from the acrimonious-split era was relocated to the site. The station itself, situated on the down side, has long been demolished and replaced with a modern bungalow; but the level-crossing keeper's cottage, a short distance away at Pounds Lane, is still visitable.
On the Isle of Wight, Morton is the area of Brading where Morton Marshes and the River Yar form a boundary to the extension of housing estates from Sandown.
St. Catherine's Hill is a 43-hectare (110-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest on the outskirts of Winchester in Hampshire. It is managed by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, and most of it is an Iron Age hillfort, which is a Scheduled Monument.
The Hampshire Basin is a geological basin of Palaeogene age in southern England, underlying parts of Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, and Sussex. Like the London Basin to the northeast, it is filled with sands and clays of Paleocene and younger ages and it is surrounded by a broken rim of chalk hills of Cretaceous age.
Brading Marshes to St. Helen's Ledges is a 488.5 hectare Site of special scientific interest which stretches from Brading along the Yar valley between Bembridge and St Helens, Isle of Wight through to the sea at Priory Bay on the north east coast of the Isle of Wight. It encompasses the Brading Marshes RSPB reserve, Bembridge harbour and the inter tidal sand, mud flats and rocky ledges exposed off the coast at low water, including the land around St Helens Fort which is not attached to the mainland. It is the second largest SSSI on the Isle of Wight. The site was notified in 1951 for both its biological and geological features.
Dorset is a county located in the middle of the south coast of England. It lies between the latitudes 50.512°N and 51.081°N and the longitudes 1.682°W and 2.958°W, and occupies an area of 2,653 km2. It spans 90 kilometres (56 mi) from east to west and 63 kilometres (39 mi) from north to south.
The Pinnacles are two chalk formations, including a stack and a stump, located near Handfast Point, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, southern England.
The geology of the Isle of Wight is dominated by sedimentary rocks of Cretaceous and Paleogene age. This sequence was affected by the late stages of the Alpine Orogeny, forming the Isle of Wight monocline, the cause of the steeply-dipping outcrops of the Chalk Group and overlying Paleogene strata seen at The Needles, Alum Bay and Whitecliff Bay.
