THE ISLE OF WIGHT

Literary connections, remnants of prehistory and wide-open scenery. Ben Lerwill gets lost in the unique thrall of England's sunniest island

- Ben Lerwill

The Isle of Wight's 70-mile coastal path passes through pretty Freshwater Bay, much loved by surfers and kayakers

AIfred, Lord Tennyson knew a decent place to hike when he saw one. It's a sunny afternoon and I'm walking up the grassy chalk downland named in the Victorian poet's honour, with the English Channel to my right, the Solent to my left and a pep to my stride.

The sky is blue and the sea breeze is light. Patching the down are thickets of yellow gorse and cream-blossomed hawthorn, while surging ahead of me into the heat-fuzzed distance are the green contours of the Isle of Wight.

It was 1853 when Tennyson (why Alfred, Lord and not Lord Alfred? These are the things you ponder when you're on a three-day coastal walk) moved to the island from London. He would call the place home for the best part of 40 years, writing of his house at Farringford: “Where, far from noise and smoke of town/ I watch the twilight falling brown,/ All round a careless-ordered garden,/ Close to the ridge of a noble down.” You can see why he chose to stay for four decades.

The downland on his doorstep - a goodly, soul-filling, kestrel-flown expanse - was his regular walking spot, hence its modern name of Tennyson Down. Its rabbit-nibbled slopes still cloak a large swathe of the island's narrow western extremity, placing it squarely, and very happily, on my route along the Isle of Wight Coastal Path.