Heading west and up the hill away from the village of Yarbridge on the Isle of Wight, one arrives at a small layby with a viewpoint, with a small car park and an ice cream van that comes by daily in summer, rain or shine, to cater to those stopped in the car park. The view you see here is the lower, flatter land created by the upper part of the Yar river, which then curves north and meets the sea near Bembridge. The large inhabited area you see is made up by the seaside towns of Sandown and Shanklin.

Towards the bottom right of the shot, you may have seen the rather odd semi-circular building, seemingly in the middle of nowhere for no real purpose. Well, my dear reader, everything has a purpose! For under that reddish roof lies the ruins of a Roman villa, built a decade or so after the Roman conquest of the isle in 44AD, and rediscovered by a farmer in the 1870s who, as he was boring holes in the earth to build a sheep pen, was surprised to find an ornate mosaic floor under his field.

You may be thinking why I’m sharing this on a furry website? Well, there being a purpose for everything, one of the mosaic floors of the 12 ground-floor rooms depicts a human with the head of a cockerel. So there you have it. :P

Hope you enjoy!