Alum Bay Sands
A traditional product of Alum Bay, and a fixture of Isle of Wight tourist shops, is the creation of ornaments using the coloured sands layered in vials and jars. The sands also were used for pictures, a popular craft in Victorian times known as marmotinto. Visitors are no longer allowed to dig out their own sands, and signs on the beach warn tourists not to climb the cliffs because of the danger of landslides. The Needles Park, however, has a facility for visitors to fill their own sand souvenirs with sand collected and preserved from natural cliff falls throughout the year. In the past it was possible to buy Alum Bay coloured sand by mail order and make ones own sand pictures and bottles at home.
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Famous quotes containing the words bay and/or sands:
“A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms,”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)