It’s not a surprise that there’s a lot to do near Yarmouth.  The Needles is a well known UK landmark and tourism in some shape or form has been around since Queen Victoria built Osborne House.

An open top bus operates frequently and follows a circular route from Yarmouth to Freshwater Bay to the Needles and the amusement park before looping back to Yarmouth.  If you’d prefer to stretch your legs then there are plenty of walks across to Freshwater Bay or up onto Tennyson Down and along to the Needles.  In fair weather taking your boat out to Alum Bay to anchor and swim is also a pleasant excursion.

Needles Park photo by Kathryn Lewis

We took the open top bus to the Needles amusement park which, off season, had a melancholy feel.  We choose to walk along the footpath to the Needles Battery and picnic’d sitting on a bench in the sunshine watching the boats leave the Needles.  We’d been to the Needles Battery before but were interested to see the English rocket launch site which is hidden on the south side of the Needles promontory so we climbed around to that and tried to imagine the British version of a rocket scientist jerry rigging a rocket together with half the budget of the Americans.  According to the information pack some of the technologies that the British team created are still in use today.

View from Needles picnic spot by Kathryn Lewis

From the Needles Battery we walked across Tennyson Down to Freshwater Bay and picked up the bus to take us back to Yarmouth.

If we had more time

• Yarmouth Castle
• The Needles Park and Alum Bay
• Walk to Freshwater
• Needles Old Battery
• Fort Victoria