Pregnancy journey no 1 – the Isle of Wight

Normal thought process when I’m planning a trip – do I need a visa, do I need any special jabs, can I fit it into my diary, can I afford it? And even though I loathe packing with a vengeance, I’ve even got pretty good at keeping a basic checklist stored away in my memory for last-minute travel. Admittedly a basic list which seems to assume at least half a dozen pairs of shoes are vital.

review trip*

So my first pregnant travel challenge was working out what my new pregnancy travel challenges were. At around eight weeks in, I was off to the Isle of Wight. Armed with emergency crackers for morning sickness.

On the face of it, everything seemed pretty straightforward. Even if I wasn’t on the UK mainland, I was only a short hop from Southampton, and despite the bad jokes about being stuck in the 50s, the island is hardly remote and off the beaten track.

Travelling with Tourism South-East, who were launching a new ‘Escape’ campaign, I didn’t even have to book accommodation – at the very cute cottages at the Garlic Farm. Even better, one of the options was heading to Goodleaf Tree Climb to be roped up and clamber through the tree branches for a great view of the countryside.

Ah. Except tree climbing isn’t high on the list of recommended activities for the first trimester, especially when I had to keep the news quiet.

Plus mild internal panic as I realised I hadn’t wrapped my head around the food recommendations as I sat down to dinner. Which cheese is on the banned list? (Not many as it turns out). How rare is too rare for meat? (Sticking to medium should be OK). Raw eggs? (No. Just no).

Fortunately I could distract myself by surreptitiously waving away the perfectly matched wines, as morning sickness had completely failed to dent my desire for a huge glass of red.

But apart from that, the invisible bump didn’t slow me down as I explored the Donald McGill postcard museum, Osborne House, the Isle of Wight steam railway, and discovered a bit more about the island’s history.

So far, so good…

Down among the garlic growers

Given that the thought of fish was making me feel queasy, and I’d packed a stash of crackers in case of morning sickness – or all-day nausea in my case – there might have been more obvious places to stay while eight weeks pregnant than on a garlic farm.

But as well as having six self-catering holiday cottages to choose from, collectively known as Mersley Farm, complete with roaring log fires, comfy beds and gorgeous views, you get to stay on a part of the Isle of Wight which has been inhabited for the past 8,000 years.

To discover more of the Garlic Farm’s intriguing past, I hopped aboard one of the tractor trailers to take a tour with owner Colin – whose own history includes selling sweetcorn to Bob Dylan at the original Isle of Wight festival.

On the site, they’ve found everything from a retired Roman centurion’s brooch, Saxon jewellery and an Elizabethan belt buckle, plus evidence of several round Iron Age huts, along with the discovery they were trading with Roman Gaul long before the Empire invaded in 42CE, and even buttons from soldiers’ tunics dating to the Napoleonic wars.

In between the fields of cornflowers, corn marigolds and vegetables like asparagus, you can still see thousand-year-old tracks, along with ancient hedgerows, and a lot more unexpectedly, narcotic thorn apples growing wild. Otherwise known as datura stramonium, the seeds can leave those who try them paralysed.

And while the farm’s asparagus crop is one of the earliest in the country, it’s the garlic which sets it apart. First brought to the island following the pleas of the Free French squadron stationed there, it’s used in a string of sauces and chutneys, with around 15 varieties grown, including elephant garlic. Even if I wasn’t about to try the garlic beer.

Vintage Victoriana

I’m still trying to decide how much maternity leave I’ll take and how to combine having a baby with work (and travel). But at least I didn’t have to juggle being Queen, Empress and mother of a truly alarming nine children.

Admittedly Queen Victoria wasn’t short of help, but a wander around Osborne House on the Isle of Wight makes for an interesting insight into how she lived when she wanted to be slightly less formal than at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

Dubbed an English country house, designed by a German in the Italian style, the royal getaway was designed by Prince Albert, and became the family’s Christmas escape, as well as a place where Kings, Tsars, Kaisers, emperors and Maharajas were entertained.

If you visit in December, you’ll get a taste of the German festive customs which still influence our celebrations today, but whenever you arrive, you can get some insights into the personalities which influenced it, from the balmy 60C temperature the Queen insisted on (with Tsar Nicholas announcing the rooms were as warm as the frozen wastes of Siberia) to the corner-cutting on the part of the frugal Prince consort.

Large expanses of Osborne House’s marble are actually painted plaster, and while the rooms and corridors used by Queen Victoria had real gold to decorate them, the other stretches had to make do with gold paint to keep the costs down.

And everywhere you turn are interlocked V and A symbols, a reminder of the famously devoted couple, before Albert’s death at 42, as you wander the corridors leading to the faintly macabre horn room where all the furniture is made from deer antler and the intricate Durbar room in the later Indian wing.

But for the real insights, join one of the regular tours, to discover some of the royal quirks – such as the fact that Queen Victoria could eat six to seven courses in 30 minutes, with everyone else’s plates whipped away by footmen as soon as she’d finished, learning about her prowess at billiards (but only ever against her ladies in waiting) and her decision to install a lift operated by suitably muscled men rather than a hydraulic option.

You can even see her bathing machine, down at the private beach where the royal children learned to swim – a beach fit for a Queen indeed.

Sauce at the seaside

Could I get a pushchair into the cosy confines of the Donald McGill postcard museum? Probably not. And would I fancy explaining the double entendres to a curious child? Definitely, no. But with only a bump in tow, it’s a great place to snigger away an hour or so.

Tongue firmly in cheek, with lashings of sauce – along with buckets and spades and donkey rides, the classic cheeky English postcard is one of the traditions of the seaside. And one of the geniuses behind them is Donald McGill, whose work is now on display at the dedicated museum on the Isle of Wight.

The artist, who created over 12,000 comic artworks postcards from 1904 until his death in 1962, has ended up chronicled events, from suffragettes to war, and changing attitudes over the decades.

But while visitors today might smirk knowingly at the innuendo, the authorities at the time weren’t always so well-disposed, and the museum also details his battles with the censors, including his prosecution under the 1857 Obscenity Act during the 1950s.

With a display asking people to guess which postcards sparked the censor’s ire, it’s surprising to see exactly what fell foul – and what passed unnoticed.

It may not be big, tucked away on hilly Union Street in Ryde, but this fascinating collection proves great things come in small packages – whatever some of McGill’s postcards might suggest!

Disclosure: My trip was courtesy of Tourism South-East. This post contains affiliate links – any purchases you make are unaffected but I may receive a small commission

Images: Osborne House copyright www.visitisleofwight.co.uk, all others copyright MummyTravels