Walking and Cycling
The Island has an extensive network of byways, bridleways, footpaths and cycle tracks, including 520 miles (840 km) of public rights of way. Several long distance paths are highlighted on Ordnance Survey maps and local signs, including a route around the whole island (the Isle of Wight Coastal Path), and smaller trails such as the Tennyson Trail and Worsley Trail. The island is also home to the Isle of Wight Walking Festival, which has taken place annually in May for ten years and now has over 200 different walks.
Sustrans National Cycle Network routes 22 and 23 have sections through the Isle of Wight, including off road sections of route 23 between Cowes and Newport and Newport and Sandown along disused railway lines. There is a signed "round-the-island" cycle route primarily on road, as well as a 12-mile (19 km) on and off road leisure route called the Sunshine Trail. The Island holds an annual Cycling Festival in July and the Isle of Wight Randonnee takes place on the May Bank holiday, a cycling race going over minor roads right around the island.
Read more about this topic: Transport On The Isle Of Wight
Famous quotes containing the words walking and/or cycling:
“The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“I shall not bring an automobile with me. These inventions infest France almost as much as Bloomer cycling costumes, but they make a horrid racket, and are particularly objectionable. So are the Bloomers. Nothing more abominable has ever been invented. Perhaps the automobile tricycles may succeed better, but I abjure all these works of the devil.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)