On Friday 6th October, to take advantage of the good weather that week, we visited the Isle of Wight again. David, SueC, Rod, Mick, Gary and I travelled down to Southampton by car with our bikes on the back, arriving in plenty of time for the 10:00 ferry. We took the Round the Island route out of East Cowes to Wooton and branched off at Havenstreet heading due south on the back roads to Newchurch before picking up the Round the Island route again. We passed through Wroxall on the way to Ventnor where we zoomed downhill on the Zig Zag Road to the seafront.

After lunch at the Winter Gardens we rode along the Esplanade then there was the short, steep [25% max] climb back up to Park Avenue before following Undercliff Drive to Niton - a nice quiet road as it is closed to cars for the short section where there was a landslip some years ago. Climbing out through Niton we followed the mainly quiet roads to Merstone to pick up the Red Squirrel Trail that took us through Newport and back to West Cowes. We had to wait a little for the chain ferry across the Medina, but we just managed to make the 16:30 the Southampton ferry in time, so we could relax on the crossing and arrive back an hour earlier than planned - 37 miles and 802m ascent.