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<!-- EDIThe Robert Hooke Trail is an 8.5 mile circular walk on the Isle of Wight from Fort Victoria to Freshwater Bay, set up in memorial to the scientist, inventor, geologist, astronomer, architect and London City surveyor Robert Hooke (1635-1703) who was born on the Island in Freshwater. The route goes alongside the Solent, down beside the Estuary of the River Yar, through Afton Marsh to Freshwater Bay, before returning via Freshwater, Golden Hill Country Park to Fort Victoria. There are several points of interest along the walk, including views across the Solent to Portsmouth, wading birds on the Estuary of the Western Yar, All Saints’ Church, the thatched St Agnes’ Church, Dimbola Lodge, the old Pound at Pound Green, Golden Hill Fort and, across the Solent, Hurst Castle with its lighthouse. Most of the Trail is along public footpaths, with part along the former railway line beside the Yar Estuary. There are twelve information plaques around the Trail describing places associated with Robert’s childhood and discussing his subsequent career,.

Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke was born in 1635 in a cottage on what is now Hooke Hill, Freshwater (Plaque 6), the son of John Hooke who was the Perpetual Curate of All Saints’ Church (Plaque 5). Robert was being tutored by his father until John’s health declined in 1648 and he died in October of that year. Robert was very talented. His later notebooks record that, as a boy, seeing an old clock taken to pieces, he copied it by making a wooden one. He would go on to work on clocks and watches. He also describes constructing a model boat with cannons that fired which he sailed on the River Yar (Plaque 4). When in the 1640s John Hoskins, a famous painter of miniatures, visited the island. Robert copied and learned his techniques. The skills he acquired are evident in his most famous publication Micrographia. Following his father’s death, aged 13, Robert left for London at about the same time Charles I was taken from the island to be tried and executed (Plaque 5). He worked briefly with another artist, Peter Lely, before moving on to Westminster School. From there he went on to Christ Church, Oxford University, where his talents were soon recognised by the gentlemen scientists who were founding the Royal Society. He was employed by one of them, Robert Boyle, to perfect an air-pump. Hooke’s wide-ranging skills made him the ideal appointment as the first Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society in 1664 (Plaque 3). It was Hooke, more than anyone else, who made the Society a success in its early days. Each week, he had to devise and demonstrate experiments for the Fellows, and in the course of this work he made important scientific discoveries in several fields. Hooke’s first major publication, Micrographia (1665), is one of the most influential books in the history of science (plaque 7). Included within it are beautiful images, new to science, of specimens viewed through his microscope, such as his famous drawing of a flea. When Hooke examined a fine slice of cork, he found it full of tiny pores. He called them cells because they looked like the compartments in a honeycomb introducing the word into science. High above sea level in the cliffs near to the Needles, Robert Hooke found a layer containing the petrified remains of shellfish (plaque 8). His extensive studies of fossils led to his realisation that some species have become extinct and thus the world was not unchanged since Creation - a bold idea for the time. Hooke described a stretch of cliff ‘almost opposite Hurst Castle’ (Plaque 12) in which was a layer filled with ‘a great variety of shells’ even though it was ‘about sixty foot or more above the high-water mark’. Hooke proposed that the reason for these and similar layers on land ‘must be the prodigious effects that have been produced by earthquakes’. His lectures to the Royal Society show him to have been a pioneer in the field of geology, propounding ideas that were ignored in his day but are now universally accepted. As an aid to navigation at sea, Hooke invented a watch regulated by the natural oscillation of a spring. In the course of this work, he formulated the Law of Elasticity/Springs (Hooke’s Law) for which he is most commonly remembered today (Plaque 10). This states that the resistance of a spring increases in proportion to its extension. It is now extensively used in science and engineering. Robert Hooke, made many astronomical observations (Plaque 1). He experimented with dropping lead shot on wet pipe clay and noted that the nature of the depressions was similar to craters on the moon. He was the first person to perform this kind of experimental investigation which is common today. Hooke was the first to write that the Moon might have ‘a principle of gravitation’. He also tracked a large spot on Jupiter to obtain the first estimate of the planet’s rotational period. There are now craters named after him on the Moon and on Mars. Hooke was also an inventor and improver of devices. One such, the universal joint, was still referred to as Hooke’s joint in the mid-twentieth century (Plaque 11). 1.	After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Hooke was appointed one of the Surveyors for the rebuilding of the City, working closely with his friend Sir Christopher Wren (Plaque 9). He went on to design churches and other significant buildings, collaborating with Wren on the Monument to the Fire of London and on St Paul’s Cathedral. It was Hooke who realised that, in order to distribute the stresses within the Dome, it should have the same shape, if inverted, as a chain hanging between two points. Hooke’s contributions were subsequently overshadowed by Wren. Also amongst Hooke’s contemporaries was Sir Isaac Newton, President of the Royal Society, who strongly disliked him. Partly as a result of Newton’s influence, Robert Hooke lapsed into relative obscurity after his death.

The Trail
The Trail was established in 2009 jointly by the Robert Hooke Society - Freshwater and the Freshwater Parish Council. Each of the twelve plaques on the route displays arrows, QR codes and What3Words to aid navigation and a QR code linking to the Society’s web-site. There is a booklet describing the trail obtainable from the web-site. Being circular, the Trail can be walked starting from any point, however, it is described from Fort Victoria.

Fort Victoria (Pl. 1) to Yarmouth (PL. 3)
Starting from Plaque 1 at Fort Victoria the route leaves the car park via the arch next to the Planetarium and The Robert Hooke Exhibition. Turning right along the sea wall beside the Solent, the walk goes along the shingle bed to join the concrete sea wall. Continuing to the end of the sea wall there is a wooden defence and the salt marsh. Here is Plaque 2. The trail turns right (signposted “Coastal Path”) uphill to the main road. After crossing the main road, the walk continues left along the pavement and over the bridge towards Yarmouth. Immediately after the bridge, the route turns right on to a tarmac path and continues ahead around the estuary to join the gravel track leading towards the old Tidal Mill, Yarmouth. Plaque 3 is on this track.

Yarmouth (Pl. 3) to Hooke’s Monument
The Trail continues along the sea wall, past the old mill, passing through a swing gate onto a gravel track, and the turns right (signposted “Y19”) down the path of the former railway line to the road at the Causeway (Pl. 4), which has lovely views down the Western Yar towards Yarmouth. Turning right over the Causeway, the route goes uphill towards All Saints’ Church Freshwater (Pl. 5, sited on the wall of the nearby pub). Continuing ahead along the road to the T-Junction of Copse Lane and Hooke Hill and then down Hooke Hill leads to the site of Hooke’s Birthplace (Pl. 6). At the bottom of the Hill is a monument to Robert Hooke.

Hooke’s Monument to Freshwater Bay (Pls. 8 & 9)
After turning left along the pavement and walking a short distance along the road, crossing the road leads to a grassy opening to Afton Marsh (Pl. 7). (An alternative in very wet weather is to continue along the main road to Freshwater Bay which bypasses the Marsh). The route turns right and takes the right-hand path along the stream to a wooden bridge. Crossing the bridge leads on to the road. Turning right along the grass verge on the other side of the road brings you to a footpath on your left. This area is called Afton Marsh. At the end of the Marsh there is a footpath to the left marked “to Freshwater Bay” and following it leads to a left-hand fork at a T-Junction which goes to a gravel road and the main road. After passing some former Coastguard cottages on your right, crossing the road and turning left for a short distance brings you to a shelter overlooking the sea and views of Freshwater Bay (Pl. 8). Retracing your steps to the road by the Albion Hotel, the route continues past some public toilets and then past Dimbola Lodge to the thatched church of St Agnes (Pl. 9), reputedly built using the stones from Hooke’s cottage.

Freshwater Bay (Pl. 9) to Fort Victoria (Pl. 1)
The left-hand road uphill (Bedbury Lane) at the corner shop continues past Tennyson’s home, Farringford House, to a kissing-gate into a field called Granny’s Mead. The tarmac path across it (F41) leads to Pound Green. Here is the circular wall of the former village pound. The route continues across the road through a tangle of grass along Queens Road to the T-Junction at Brookside Road. Turning right along a tarmac path, with a stream on your left, takes you through the car park to Moa Place. Exiting the car park by the toilets and turning right along the pavement with the stream on your right, you pass Plaque 10. After crossing the road at the pedestrian crossing and turning right towards the school, the route continues by turning left at the school entrance onto a tarmac path (F18) which goes uphill to a path cross-roads. Sharp right and sharp left takes you to a dirt track to Golden Hill Fort. At the top of the rise, a short detour (20 metres) along the gravel track on your right provides views of the downs and farmlands to the east of the Island. From the car park for Golden Hill Country Park (Pl. 11) footpath F15 continues through the industrial complex to the main road. The route turns left down-hill and then turns right into Monks Lane and then continues past the entrance to Brambles Holiday village and uphill to the entrance to Cliff End. A right turn (signposted “Coastal Path”) onto a path between two fences goes to a gravel path and a viewpoint (Pl. 12) looking out over Hurst Castle. Going downhill, the route turns along an old roadway and, ignoring the path to the shore on the left, along the gravel path before turning left downhill to the back of Fort Victoria.