[1] Afton Down faces Compton Bay directly to the west, while Freshwater is approximately one mile north.

It was the site of the Isle of Wight Festival 1970, where the Guinness Book of Records estimates 600,000 to 700,000, and possibly 800,000 people, flocked to see the musical talents of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Free, The Who, The Doors, Ten Years After, Taste (Irish band), and Jimi Hendrix.

Large European gorse bushes grow on the cliff, with the shelter they provide allowing other plants such as wild cabbage and bird's foot trefoil to thrive.The Isle of Wight's county flower, the pyramidal orchid, also grows here, along with Plantago lanceolata, the main food plant for the rare Glanville fritillary.

A car park is situated near the highest point of the Military Road's route over the down, and allows for walkers to travel along a footpath downhill towards Freshwater Bay.

It is inscribed with a memorial to 15 year-old Edward Lewis Miller of Goudhurst in Kent who died after falling from the cliff in 1846.