Despite its diminutive dimensions, the Isle of Wight is a top spot for walking in the UK. With cliff tops, hills, forests, headlands and beaches, the Isle of Wight has a huge variety of terrain to explore. Home to an award winning walking festival, on of the UK’s largest, the island is well aware of its walking potential and paths are well marked and maintained.
As well as great views (the Needles being perhaps the most famous), the Isle of Wight also offers some fun family incentives for getting out walking all year around. With its heritage as the ‘Dinosaur Isle’ and one of the UK’s top spots for finding fossils and dinosaur remains, you can plan a family walk around exploring this history or taking in a spot of fossil hunting. There is a Dino Island app which shows the locations of several ‘meteorite’ information points across the Isle of Wight where kids can get an interactive insight into the dinosaurs who used to roam the island – a great starting point for planning a wander in any weather.
Wildlife walks are another great idea with red squirrels widespread across the island – a sight most children living in the South of England will be totally unfamiliar with.
You can find below this post some tried and tested Baby Routes walks on the Isle of Wight. For further inspiration, do take a look at the links below where you will find some useful walking resources for planning your Isle of Wight family wanders.
- Wightlink Ferry Walks: The Wightlink website has a page dedicated to walking routes on the Isle of Wight with a handy tool for filtering walks by location, length and difficulty. They include a ‘family friendly’ rating making it handy for planning walks with children.
- Isle of Wight Tourism: The official Isle of Wight tourism page has a walking section with a selection of inland and coastal routes sorted by distance. There are not a lot of short walk suggestions but it does give a good starting point and some ideas for longer family wanders.
- The Isle of Wight Walking Festival: the Isle of Wight Walking Festival website gives full details of the annual events in May and October and the various different (and often quirky – Speed Dating walk anyone?) walks on offer. There is also a section with a list of the various walking trails across the Isle of Wight – a good source of inspiration.
- Isle of Wight Council: the local authority website has a section on walking on the Isle of Wight with a selection of routes and some links to other walking websites.
- Isle of Wight Ramblers: details of walks, walker friendly pubs and the Ramblers group activities and events on the Isle of Wight. A little tricky to find what you want but some really valuable resources.
- National Trust: The National Trust has a page dedicated to Isle of Wight walking with a list of self-guided trails available. There are also links to other useful walking resources for the Isle of Wight.
