cultural tourism? Or research?

The Island Coaster bus from Ventnor to Freshwater is one of the most beautiful countryside rides imaginable - downs, and chalky headlands, and wildflowers everywhere.  First stop for me was Dimbola, Julia Margaret Cameron's house, rescued and restored from being holiday lets, and telling the story of Cameron's photographic career - it was clear what a relatively small, and crowded, and probably utterly chaotic establishment this must have been: it domesticated Cameron (if that's the right word ...) - or to put it another way, brought home how remarkable it was to create what she did  without having masses more personal space. This is one of her working rooms, with a view towards Freshwater Bay;

and here were a couple of the frames made for the big V&A show of her work back in 2015, filled with a blurry film so that we, too, could take a photo with the same effects as a JMC ... OK, then, here's a very blurry view of the dustbins.

One of the arguments I make in my Snail chapter is that surely there must have been snails in very many settings that were painted, or, say, in many of Cameron's photos that have backgrounds think with ivy - even if they were invisible.  You can imagine my delight when, in the middle of having a splendidly English cheese scone for my lunch from the excellent tea room there I saw, climbing up a window ... I think the people next to me were a little surprised when I leapt to my feet and started photographing it, but it was irresistible.

Then I walked off some of that scone by heading up Tennyson Down - where he used to charge around in his cape and hat (probably not in weather like today) - indeed, he was still capable of running downhill from this walk in his eighties.  The high point of the Down - and a view of the Needles - is behind me, but this gives a sense of how thick it was with flowers.

And then - the garden to Farringford, Tennyson's house, itself.  I know what you're thinking - Come into, garden, Maud etc (yes, I know that was Lincolnshire, but still ...) and so was I - until I learned the history of the house. For a whole chunk of the twentieth century, it was a hotel, owned first by Thomas Cook, and then by Pontin, of holiday camp fame ...  the house is now privately owned, and the twentieth century bits removed, and all renovated as accurately as possible, and one would never know that on the site of this stunning, very English garden were fourteen holiday chalets, and the garden was only started in 2017.  But look at it!

One couldn't take any photos insied the house itself: it is grand, but in a small scale way - apart from T's own big library/working room.  I, of course, was the irritating tour member who kept asking pesky questions about the art work - not trick questions; questions like "who painted this...?" - but which weren't answerable, apparently, so I felt bad being the person about whom it was probably said over the dinner table - "oh, we had one of those guests today ..."

Walking back into the village, a number of thatched cottages that looked as though they'd fallen straight out of a Helen Allingham painting - Allingham, indeed, stayed chez Tennyson a lot, and painted everything thatched and picturesque within walking distance, it would seem...

although I don't believe that included the thatched church (she did, though, paint the kitchen garden, from several angles, and Tennyson's Down, with flowers).

And then, while waiting for the bus back, there was Freshwater Bay.  Yes, this is summer in idyllic England ...