Adgestone

As trailed at reference 1, we paid the vineyard to be found at reference 2 a visit in the course of our second week on the Isle of Wight. One of our very few visits to a visitor attraction of the holiday.

OS shows that the vineyard is near the bottom of Brading Down, on a south facing slope. While gmaps suggests that it was once just one large field, with the modest winery buildings bottom centre. Very artisanal, much more so than our own Denbies, of reference 3 - which last gets just the occasional visit - it being more use to us as a pit-stop than as a wine-shop. But they share a desire to attract paying guests.

The view from the car park, with cows. I suppose cows can make something of dried out stubble, but I don't suppose that it is much.

One of their contributions to a local carnival. Someone must have put a fair amount of work into them, one supposes a someone with ready access to the necessary materials and tools. Would get a bit expensive otherwise.

At the check-in we were greeted by a very personable young lady, perhaps a daughter of the house, who seemed to be something of a jack-of-all-trades front of house. All very friendly and relaxed.

A type of bar stool which I first came across in Great Windmill Street, at which I used, a long time ago, to take an occasional Jamaican cigar of a lunch-time.

And so onto the grapes. BH was fortified with a little audio guide which played into ear plugs. Which, as I recall, worked well on top of the ear pieces of her hearing aids. About the size of a telephone, only rather fatter.

The echium enclosure. Not in the same league as the ones at Ventnor, but probably on the way. See, for example, reference 4. For the plant, which only lives for two or three years, despite its woody trunk and size - these specimens being much smaller than the ones at Ventnor - see reference 8.

The arrangements for getting tension in the line wires. I wondered how deep the peg lower left, underneath the bit of blue pipe, was driven. Did it have a corkscrew thread? No-one about to ask.

A spider's nest with blackberries, yet to ripen. I think the spider was at home, but I can't find him in the snap this afternoon. 

Google Images suggests that there may have been two spiders at this point, with the male expiring or being expelled before eggs start to appear late summer. Ought to be easy enough to check.

No doubt about there being chalk here. I failed, once again, to find any pyramid orchids. Previous failures yet to be noticed.

Looking south east from the top of the field. A thoughtfully placed bench in the shade.

A grape pickers' box stash. Hidden away, a bit out of the plastic-rotting sun?

A bit of expensive looking boundary fencing. We were told protection against rabbits and foxes, rather than deer.

Google Images says common chicory (aka Cichorium intybus). Which pretty much agrees with what I find in Wikipedia at reference 5, particularly in the helpful botanical drawing. I think I see the hairy stems and Google Images is not bothered by the absence of the larger toothed leaves, which he says are buried, withered or died away.

I think he is right, but it is a pity that I did not manage a better snap for identification purposes.

The visit closed with an unsupervised visit to the vats and bottles in the cellar: I can't imagine such a thing happening in Denbies, or, for that matter, in the Neal's Yard Dairy cheese room underneath the arches at Bermondsey.

The wire cages must be stronger than they look, carrying, as they do, considerable weight.

A detail.

The brain.

Gemini's take fits what I saw. No reason to doubt him on this occasion.

And so onto the Roman Villa for a light lunch. We had thought it too early and too hot for the wine tasting offered - although we did visit the shop. But a pleasant and relaxed visit: just the thing for a hot morning.

PS 1: I don't recognise much of Great Windmill Street in Street View today, and a bit of digging suggests that the Red Lion that I knew, some time after the snap above was taken, has been rather clumsily rebranded as a Be-At-One. From my time, I remember a steady trickle of girls, possibly Thai girls, making their way upstairs. The landlord might have been from what was then Yugoslavia. And before that there was the once famous Nosh Bar, a little way down the street: famous for its salt beef, the like of which I have never had since. The salt beef at the fake caff at Selfridges comes nowhere near. The real caff, as I recall, was decorated with arty, signed, black-and-white shots of boxers and other entertainers.

PS 2: today is, hopefully, the crest of the current wave. 93°F in the roof of our garage, or 34°C in new-speak. Comfortably beating the 87°F I recorded in the second half of June. I have not ventured out of doors since I got back from s Screwfix circuit at around 08:00. Quite hot enough then.

It seemed much cooler by 21:00, and I did not believe BH's telephone which said that it was still 27°C, which I think of as pretty hot. I then visited the garage again, where it said 86°F, that is to say 30°C. My telephone by then said 26°C, that is to say 79°F. To be fair, my reading was just under the flat roof of a shut garage. Hot air rising and all that.

Maybe it is not just temperature control that goes AWOL as one gets older, but also temperature sensing.

PS 3: 19:30: for the first time in maybe a year, I have just taken my Trek road bike up and down the road. The tyres had held their pressure, so all I had to do was tighten up the back brake, add a spot of oil to the the chain & cassette and off. All seemed well, except that something was wrong with the front wheel. It did not look buckled, but something was not right. 

• Option 1: put the bike in for a full service somewhere? What might I have to pay for that? 
• Option 2: buy a new front wheel and hope for the best. 
• Option 3: having regard to reference 6, buy two new tyres and tubes.

I have failed to work out when I stopped using the Trek in a regular way. There was confirmed usage in 2020, as noticed at reference 6. Then there was heavy use during the plague, with the more or less daily Jubilee Way run. Confirmed usage in 2022. I look to have been on the trolleys, that is to say walking rather than riding, by 2024. But there seems to be a gap in the record for 2023.

Notwithstanding, I don't think trekking ever really recovered after my exit at reference 7, at the end of 2023, although I remained connected to the Bullingdons.

So I think that the best that I can do is that regular trekking more or less stopped sometime during 2023, some three years ago. 

Certainly, the ancient Karrimor saddle bags are looking a bit tired and the zips are very stiff, possibly to the point of breaking points. The elastic ties which attach the bottoms of the bags to their frame are perished -  something of a weak point in otherwise well made articles. I took the bags off for the purposes of the test drive. 

I already had them when we were living in Norwich, and while I can't remember what bike I was riding at that point, possibly a Dawes, I must have kept the bags and carried them forward.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/07/scone-report.html. The present excursion being the trigger for the deer story to be found here.

Reference 2: https://www.adgestonevineyard.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.denbies.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/08/ventnor.html. A hot day in 2023.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicory.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/maintenance-time.html. Back wheel problems.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/exit-portal.html.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echium_pininana.

Reference 9: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/06/blue-maid.html. I got back on the Bullingdons a month ago, but have been put off since both by the heat and by the idea of travelling in hot trains.