The razor-edged Needles can really be seen best from a boat, because, looked at from above, they naturally lose in foreshortening, and do not seem to tower out of the water so much as they really do. The only way in which their height can be measured from the shore is to note the apparent smallness of the lighthouse at the seaward end, which is quite a respectable-sized building, standing eighty feet above high-water mark. All home-coming captains look out for the Needles' light, which shows white for fourteen miles westward and red for nine miles south. The ships which have weathered long voyages feel they are home again once they sight that light, but alas! many times, owing to the dangerous fogs in the Channel, the light is hard to pick up, and the captain has to creep along cautiously, aware that he may easily be out of his reckoning, and much too near a singularly dangerous coast. The tallest pinnacle of the Needles at the landward end, known as "Lot's Wife," was broken off many years ago by the waves.
Quite as striking a feature of the island as the Needles are the wonderful chalk downs which run from Freshwater Bay to Culver. The range is broken by a fault at right angles to its main axis, and in this fault is the valley of the Medina. The little River Yar, oddly enough, rises within a few yards of the beach on the south side of the island at Freshwater, and running north through a gap in the chalk falls into the sea at Yarmouth on the north side. Freshwater Bay in itself is a curious formation, a break in the sweeping cliffs which culminate in two horns on the two sides, while the actual beach is of the tiniest proportions, so that the sea, gradually narrowed as it rolls in, breaks with terrific force in a south-west gale. On the highest point of the cliff, near the west end, there used to be a beacon, now replaced by a cross to the memory of Lord Tennyson. The cliff at this place is 490 feet high.
The range of downs is called by various names, such as High Down, Afton Down, Shalcomb Down, Mottistone Down, Brixton Down, Apes Down, Bowcombe Down, Gallibury Down, Rowborough Down, Lemerston Down, Gansons Down, Gatcombe Down, Chillerton Down, Mount Joy, St. George's Down, Arreton Down, Messly Down, Ashey Down, Brading Down, and Bembridge Down. All or any of these afford fine walks with sweeping views on a clear still day, but on a windy day they are best avoided, as the short slippery grass surface slopes steeply down to tremendous cliffs, and there is more than one record of an unfortunate individual taken unawares. As might be supposed, the island is celebrated among golfers, and there are excellent links, some of them upon the Downs, and the game claims the attendance of its devotees from Bembridge to the Needles.