Home Page Skip Navigation
Weather Info

Home > News > 2010 > 7 > 20 > Archive >

Clare Balding - Britain By Bike - Isle of Wight

Copyright Lion television

An Isle of Wight episode is to be broadcast at 2030 on Tuesday 3 August on BBC FOUR.

Clare Balding sets out on a two-wheel odyssey to re-discover Britain – from the saddle of a touring cycle.Clare follows the wheeltracks of compulsive cyclist and author Harold Briercliffe whose evocative guide books of the late 1940s lovingly describe by-passed Britain - a world of unspoiled villages, cycle touring clubs and sunny B-roads…Carrying a set of Harold’s cycling touring guides for company – and riding his very own bicycle – Clare embarks on six iconic cycle rides to try and find the world he described - if it’s still there.

Clare begins her Isle of Wight two wheel expedition in Shanklin and heads onto The Winterbourne at Bonchurch where Charles Dickens spent his holidays and wrote one of his most famous novels, ‘David Copperfield’.

Next stop is St Boniface Down, the highest point on the Island.  Clare meets local resident and blogger Simon Perry to hear the story of these extrodinary structures and the part they played in protecting Britain from the German Luftwaffe.  She then heads off to Ventnor and the Undercliff where both Karl Marx and a young Winston Churchill had taken the air.

Dropping in at the Buddle Inn, described by Briercliffe as a “sophisticated roadhouse”, Clare enjoys a refreshing drink before embarking on the final leg of her journey along the Military Road to Tennyson Down. 

She meets an old friend – Elizabeth Hutchings – who explains that Tennyson wrote Crossing The Bar, his famous elegy, on the ferry from nearby Freshwater back to the mainland.

Britain By Bike is part of BBC Four’s season celebrating the outdoors – The Call Of The Wild.