OS Explorer map OL29, Isle of Wight: Cowes, Newport, Ryde, Sandown, Shanklin, Yarmouth & Ventnor – I own this map, but had not visited it before starting this blog. Visited for this post 20th October 2022
Google Maps location links: Ryde Pier, Garlic Farm, Yarmouth, Shanklin, the Needles
The Isle of Wight is a pretty popular place to go on holiday for people living in the southern half of England, so I’m not quite sure how it is that, despite having visited over half the OS Explorer map areas in Britain, until this trip, I’d never been there before. In fact, I’ve barely explored most of the area to the south and east of London – I’ve been to only a handful of places in Hampshire, Sussex and Kent and rarely done much exploring. Perhaps it’s that I’ve lived in the Midlands and East Anglia, while the North, Wales, Scotland and the South West always somehow feel more exciting as holiday destinations than the South East. In any case, this is a situation I plan to remedy!
The journey there
I finally came to Wight on a short holiday with the Dearest Progenitors, staying in a holiday cottage near Yarmouth, at the western end of the island. I worked in London on the Wednesday, and planned to get the train down to Portsmouth Harbour that evening, then the WightLink fast passenger catamaran from there to Ryde, where my parents would collect me. These ferries are nicely integrated not just with the trains from London – one can buy through tickets, and walk directly off the train onto the ferry – but also with the Island Line trains at the other end, which excitingly run out along Ryde Pier to meet the ferries out over the ocean!
Unfortunately, things didn’t go to plan: at lunchtime on the day of departure, I got a call from a government immigration officer, telling me that I was required to meet him for a compliance visit at one of my workplaces the next morning – i.e. a visit where they interview me and inspect our documentation, to make sure we’re complying with our duties as an employer sponsoring migrant workers. So I let my parents know I’d be half a day late, stayed in London an extra night, and attended the compliance visit – it went okay, though it felt like a very challenging exam: not an experience I’ve had since leaving university!
In the end, I managed to get on a train from Waterloo down to Portsmouth at 11:30am that next morning – however, due to an odd 2-hour gap in the ferry timetable, if I took the planned ferry route from Portsmouth Harbour I’d be waiting there over an hour. I therefore got off the train one stop early at Portsmouth & Southsea, to get the Hovertravel hovercraft service to Ryde instead – the world’s only remaining public scheduled passenger hovercraft service, I’m told! Having thought I’d need to walk or taxi to the hover terminal, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the “Hoverbus” connecting service, scheduled very conveniently to connect between the London trains and hover flights, could take me instead. The hovercraft was great fun! I’d never been in one before, and it feels very speedy, zipping across the Solent in just ten minutes. The Dearest Progenitors met me off it as planned, after which I stayed three nights with them on the island.
On the island
I have to say, I rather liked Wight! It had a great variety of landscapes over a small area: hilly fields, beaches, cliffs, open clifftop downs (I love a good uncultivated upland area). I’m all for wilderness holidays, but on Wight I appreciated it being reasonably densely populated: there’s a good density of attractions, shops, restaurants and the like; multiple town centres to explore, while the countryside still feels pretty quiet.
We were staying in Yarmouth, at the western end of the island, which was a cute little town: it was nice being able to walk out of our front door and be directly on the few streets of little shops and so on.
Yarmouth also has a little wooden pier that was enjoyable to walk down at night, and a castle –16th century naval defence, not medieval – quirkily tucked away at one edge of town, accessible only down a little alley between two houses, and surrounded on all sides by buildings or the sea.
On the day I arrived, before heading over to Yarmouth from collecting me off the hovercraft, my parents and I made one stop: the Isle of Wight Garlic Farm. As you might guess, this is a farm that grows garlic, but it also has a restaurant, various visitor things like tours, walks etc; and a shop selling a bewildering array of garlic-derived products, as well as various varieties of garlic itself, to eat or plant. I’m a garlic fan – it makes most any non-dessert food better, in my opinion – so I bought several things, including an old household favourite, garlic jam (great with cheese), and some garlic tomato ketchup which looked interesting. A cursory look at the restaurant menu proved tempting enough that Mother Dearest booked for us to come back for lunch the next day, which proved to be a good decision – Father Dearest and I had a “garlic mezze platter”, which was great: garlic bread, a whole roasted garlic bulb, garlic mushrooms, and many other things.
On our first full day, after our garlic farm lunch, we visited the seaside town of Shanklin, which was pleasant, though I feel the little gorge Shanklin Chine could have done without the army of Hallowe’en pumpkins and skeletons set about the place – I’m sure it works in the evening when the illuminations are up, but during the daytime it just made a visit to a natural feature feel rather odd. Trying out the cliff lift on our way back to the car left us a little bemused: we’d assumed it would be glass-fronted or have a viewing platform at the top or something such that we’d get a view, but no: it was just a very normal lift, with a man sitting inside it to collect the fare.
We went for a couple of walks while on Wight, the first of which was a short one on our way back to the cottage from Shanklin, when we made a diversion to drive up onto St Boniface Down, an open clifftop area [1] that conveniently has a road to the top of it, due to the radio station that’s up there. Parking the car near some cows, we had a nice short walk, with views down to the sea and the town of Ventnor, and back across to Shanklin.
Our second walk of the holiday was a longer one the next day, along the clifftops at the westernmost point of the island to see The Needles. It was a good walk! It was occasionally sunny, which had been a rare occurrence so far on our trip, and the sea views were very nice in all directions. Looking northwards, we could see across the Solent to Southampton and the coastline heading off west towards Bournemouth, and to the east we could see the continuing cliffs along the southern coast of Wight.
And that was it, really! On Sunday, the third morning after I arrived on the island, it was time to go home. Now as mentioned, I’d originally planned to take the fast Portsmouth-Ryde catamaran to Wight, and so had booked the hovercraft for the way back, to get to try out both options. Since I ended up on the hovercraft on the way out, I wouldn’t get to take the catamaran. However, happily, the Dearest Progenitors dropped me in Ryde a little early, and I had time to go out to the end of Ryde Pier, where the catamarnas dock, and go just one stop on an Island Line train back to Ryde Esplanade station, back at the start of the pie. A fun little trip, to send a fun little trip!
[1] I kept wanted to describe these areas on Wight as heaths, not being very familiar with down and downland. However, looking this up now that I’m back home, I’ve discovered this fun piece of Parliamentary minutes, which gives an official government definition of heath, moor, down and mountain in the context of the well-loved Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. I appreciate this, as I’ve had trouble working out the distinction between heaths and moors before.
Visiting all the maps! 