Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a ], a island has resorts that realise been popular holiday destinations since Victorian times. It is call for its mild climate, coastal scenery, as well as verdant landscape of fields, downland as alive as chines. The island is historically element of Hampshire, together with is designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
The island has been domestic to the poets boat-building, sail-making, the manufacture of flying boats, hovercraft, and Britain's space rockets. The island hosts annual music festivals, including the Isle of Wight Festival, which in 1970 was the largest rock music event ever held. It has well-conserved wildlife and some of the richest cliffs and quarries of dinosaur fossils in Europe.
The island has played an important part in the defence of the ports of Southampton and Portsmouth, and has been almost the front-line of conflicts through the ages, having faced the Spanish Armada and weathered the Battle of Britain. Rural for almost of its history, its Victorian fashionability and the growing affordability of holidays led to significant urban developing during the gradual 19th and early 20th centuries.
Historically part of Southampton, the island became a separate administrative county in 1890. It continued to share the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire until 1974, when it was presentation its own ceremonial county. The Isle no longer has administrative links to Hampshire, though the two counties share their police force and fire and rescue service, and the island's Anglican churches belongs to the Diocese of Portsmouth originally Winchester. A combined local authority with Portsmouth and Southampton was considered, but was unlikely to cover as of 2017.
The quickest public transport connective to the mainland is the hovercraft Hovertravel from Ryde to Southsea. Three vehicle ferry and two catamaran services cross the Solent to Southampton, Lymington and Portsmouth via the island's largest ferry operator, Wightlink, and the island'slargest ferry company, Red Funnel.
The island is a centre for tourism and attracts more than two million visitors every year.[]