IoW postcard: Ticket to Ryde
There are several ways to get to get to the Isle of Wight from the mainland - there need to be. Five ferry services shuttle back and forth across the Solent to England's largest island, for the benefit of residents trying to get off and tourists trying to get on. Most of these depart from Portsmouth, which is convenient if you're coming from London, and two of them head for Ryde. This is the northeasternmost town on the island, and the only place in the country where you can board a tube train, a hovercraft or a catamaran. What more reason do you need?
The hovercraft is the quickest way across, not surprisingly, assuming you're not totally amazed that a regular hovercraft service exists in this day and age. Unfortunately for inbound rail passengers it departs from the beach at Southsea, so any time benefit is lost in trekking down the seafront, which is why I took the catamaran instead. This leaves from the jetty alongside Portsmouth Harbour, so is a doddle to get to, and the sailings are timed to connect with the trains. On a Saturday morning the top deck is full of Wightventurers, many of them in lycra with their bikes docked down below. More regular travellers sit in the saloon because there are more seats and because they've seen it all before. Towering over the departure point is the Spinnaker Tower, now bedecked in its full Emirates branding, although the red stickering would have gone all the way to top had the airline's original plans been accepted. The sights keep coming, from Victory's masts to Gosport's tower blocks, then recede as the ferry heads out into open water.
Hampshire's maritime folk love their watersports, so you'll likely see several out and about on the water. I spotted a flurry of colourful yachts a-regatting off the harbour at Cowes, and a solo sail tacking past a distant seafort. At one point the hovercraft sped by on a parallel path, as if scheduled to depart later and arrive earlier to make a point. It sped on to land on the shore of the approaching town, skirt billowing, while we (after twenty minutes or so) sidled up to the end of the pier. This is a rusty construction, with seawater sploshing in the gaps between the girders, which is perhaps not surprising on the world's oldest seaside pier. Now over 200 years old (201 this week to be precise) it consists of three parallel structures. The first is a promenade now used by pedestrians (for free) and cars (for a toll of £1), while the second is a disused tramway sealed off and gaping deep. And the third is for tube trains, by golly yes, and this obviously was the way to go.
You board your 1938 stock at an almost normal platform, apart from the fact it's above the sea with water visible beneath the planks. A couple of minutes of potential hovercraft-spotting takes you to the town's main station, ooh how exciting, and then there's an actual tunnel (whose dimensions are the main reason these old trains are still used). Ryde St Johns is the railway's hub with its sidings of stock, some of the carriages in far better shape than others. And then the line heads out across open fields, the landscape of inner Wight being particularly attractive, to reach the resorts of Sandown and Shanklin. Saturday morning's service was quite busy, more with tattooed locals than daytrippers, and only the one obviously agitated trainspotter. But the line through the chalk to Ventnor has been closed for almost 50 years, so at Shanklin those going all the way have to transfer to the bus. Assuming they can bear to alight, that is - I was always going to be the last passenger out. [12 photos]
IoW postcard: Ventnor
The sunniest town in Britain sprawls across a long clay cliff overlooking the English Channel, its houses laid out in south-facing rows like the banked seats in a theatre. I was immediately won over as the bus switchbacked over tumbling sea-view fields, then descended sharply to the main town at almost sea level. With only half an hour between buses there wasn't time to fully explore, so I did the next best thing and popped into the Ventnor Heritage Museum . This is a proper local honeypot which attempts to tell the diverse history of the town rather than simply shoving some fossils in a case. I enjoyed reading the print-based ephemera on a series of display stands, and scoured the list of famous residents to discover that Brian Murphy of George and Mildred fame was born in Pier Street, whereas Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens's soujourns were merely temporary. Special thanks to the volunteers who keep the museum open almost daily, in the face of visitor numbers that rarely reach double figures, and who were more than keen to highlight points of interest and to get the train set working. By the end of my visit I was more than convinced that I absolutely definitely have to come back and visit this amazing little town properly, and rest assured I will. [2 photos]
IoW postcard: Newport
One impressive thing about the Isle of Wight is how good its bus service is. Having planned a ridiculously jam-packed day out, reliant on several connections, not once did the buses let me down. After a series of rides via Shanklin, Godshill, Ventnor and Blackgang, eventually the number 6 deposited me bang on time in the centre of the island at Newport bus station. Newport's not especially lovely, or at least none of the corners I identified during my short stay. The Guildhall broods sub-gothically, and there's a sweet narrow lane curving close by, but the quayside overlooking the River Medina was dominated by a concrete overpass, and the backs of pubs populated by cussing drunkards. Much like any town really, but on Wight it disappoints. [2 photos]
IoW postcard: Isle of Wight Steam Railway
If the island you're visiting is holding a real ale evening on a steam railway the day you visit, obviously you go. It packs even more into the day, offers a meal into the bargain, and delivers a ride through remote countryside (ah bugger, taxi required). The Isle of Wight Steam Railway runs services only along the central miles of the former link from Newport to Ryde, serving a population of almost nil, which is both fabulous and means you don't come to a real ale evening without a designated driver. It's a bargain too, offering two end-to-end services and a first free pint for under a tenner, and after that go buy some plastic tokens from the cheery lady over there.
Just before six the blue engine at Haven Street puffs back and up and back, attaching itself to the carriages before a far smaller crowd than usual because on this occasion beer is more enticing than steam. For reasons of beer and steam I'm also one of the youngest here, although there is a defiantly youthful contingent from abroad soaking up what being British is probably all about. A total of three stations have barrels in place, the idea being to sample a variety of ales and chestnut porters while the train pauses up and down the line. The Men Who Play At Trains wear their smartest uniforms to check the tickets, while paying punters attempt to find a narrow third class compartment whose padded bench seating is as yet unoccupied. Nobody seems to mind that eventually-drunk people are taking plastic cups of liquid aboard heritage rolling stock, nor to have sorted out an efficient queueing system at the first station we reach. Years of practice on the Central line enable me to grab my glass of Scrumdiggity before most have even left the train.
There's bangers and mash back at Haven Street, a tasty platter but served so slowly that the back of the queue has to gulp it down fast before the train proceeds. The fields before Ashey are alive with rabbits, bounding from the undergrowth and disappearing down their burrows as we approach. It's a delight to be out here on a summer's evening, inhaling the occasional sooty speck, although had the sun come out it'd have been even better. Most of the passengers alight at the penultimate station, the 4.3% Wight Squirrel proving too tempting, but I'm intent on reaching teetotal Smallbrook Junction at the end of the line. This unusual station has no exit and exists only to transfer passengers to the Island Line. Alas the timetable doesn't permit connections this evening so I have to watch a tube train speed by - it'll be at Ryde Pier Head an hour before me, from which I'll start my journey home. But when the alternative is beer and steam and more rabbits, extending your Isle of Wight meander is clearly a winner. [6 photos]
Britain's oldest theme park sits at the southern point of the Isle of Wight, somewhat precariously, on the edge of a crumbly clay cliff. It's been here since the 1840s, when the island first became a holiday destination, and is still run by descendants of the same family. The scenic ravine which gives the area its name has long since disappeared over the edge, as have a number of the older attractions therein. But there's plenty left to enjoy on a family day out, at this low-key fantastical and delightfully quirky pleasure ground.
There can't be many theme parks where you enter between the legs of a giant fibreglass pirate. Getting any further costs the best part of twenty quid, not helped if you turn up on the first day of peak season prices, but for that you can come back any day for the next week (which if you're holidaying here is a bargain). I had two hours between buses, which required a dash around to sample the majority of the site including most of its weirder corners. [10 photos]
I last visited Blackgang Chine in the early 1970s as part of a family summer holiday, and for some reason my abiding memory is of the Crooked House and a hall of mirrors. There was no sign of the latter, but the Crooked House is still there, overlooking the clifftop close to the park entrance. You walk in expecting mechanically shaking walls and floors but oh no, Blackgang isn't like that. Instead this is an exercise in oblique carpentry, with walls and narrow passageways at non-orthogonal angles, and scenes from the rhyme "There was a crooked man" incorporated in tableaux along the way. The crooked man sleeps under a seventies brown duvet, cooks breakfast in a depressingly retro kitchen and watches the test card on his ancient TV set with an IoW-shaped aerial. Most of the children larking through in the wrong direction must have wondered what the hell the point was, but those who 'got' it might well be bringing their kids here in thirty years time.
Down a twisty track is the Smugglers Cave, a tale of derring do and shipwreck on the rocks below, and a licorice allsort cottage, and the home of the Weather Wizard who (no, sorry, I'm on a tight schedule). The Triassic Club is gobsmackingly not what you expect, spoilers, as an animatronic dino-butler ushers you through to a hungry smoking-jacketed allosaurus accompanied by an ostrich on the piano. I walked out having to pinch myself that this actually happened. Rumpus Mansion is similarly semi-mechanical, as various spirits and goblins almost run riot at the press of a button, while in the Valley of the Dodos a colony of big extinct birds gyrate to the BeeGees hit Staying Alive. And yet today's kids seemed much happier elsewhere, clambering over anything they could climb on, or running amok in Cowboy Town, a facsimile Wild West main street laid out beneath towering cliffs which may one day erase it.
It's not all old stuff. One of the latest attractions is Restricted Area 5, a lengthy boardwalk down the cliff face where scout packs can come face to face with giant moving dinosaurs, including a T-Rex that had one small visitor fleeing in terror. It's brilliantly done, including witty takes on warning signs and a section where you'll likely get wet. The park's recently bowed to modern tastes and introduced a rollercoaster called Cliffhanger, whose 35mph curves I spun round twice, but which is also portable should the land nearby ever crumble. I also braved the water slides, where you climb into a dinghy and speed down a bumpy chute, but so did several five year-olds so it's nothing to be especially proud of. But the centre-less hedge maze I had pretty much to myself, and as for Nurseryland (which brings various seminal rhymes 'to life') not one target audience visitor could be seen. Alas Old Mother Hubbard and The House That Jack Built aren't the crowdpleasers they once were, if ever.
As part of the park's unstated ambition to inform, educate and entertain, the sheds containing World of Timber are just as exciting as you might expect. Rather better is an indoor exhibit based on the BBC's Coast, in which Dick Strawbridge tells the tale of repeated local cliff falls, and invites you to stand on a shaking platform to experience the same. Nextdoor the Wight Experience offers a 15 minute cinematic overview of the island (not ideal if there are only 14 minutes left before your bus goes). But if you want to see the model village you really are too late, because that toppled over in the great collapse of 1994. Indeed there are several old paths at Blackgang Chine that have had to be fenced off because they end in slumped clay cliffs. There's a particularly good view of the collapse from the edge of the Water Gardens, an extensive gouged-out splurge of Lower Greensand with the remainder of the island's cliffs strung out behind. Best visit soon. by bus: 6
IoW postcard: Godshill Model Village
A few miles inland, in the picture postcard village of Godshill, is the Isle of Wight's modelmaking hotspot. A minor model village exists in the gardens round the back of The Old Smithy, centred around a giant map of the island edged by a shallow blue channel. They like their giant maps in Wight, indeed I remember wandering around a similar but larger one back when I was but small. But the Smithy's is merely the aperitif, for across the lane lies the proper Godshill Model Village, and this is both main meal and dessert rolled into one. The top of the gardens is the oldest, dating back to the early Fifties, and based on the seaside streets of nearby Shanklin. From the parish church down to the shore, past a complete hotel and high street, the buildings are enlivened by the most wonderful array of characters each with a charm of their own. From punks to nuns and morris dancers to bandsmen, each has been lovingly created with a spark that'll make you smile... look, a streaker on the football pitch, and why are there dinosaurs on the train, and isn't that Santa atop the 1:10 scale wind turbine? [11 photos]
Lower down the focus switches to Godshill itself, with the model medieval church atop on a mound in front of the real thing. The owners have taken this approach to its logical extreme, and the model of Godshill village contains a model of the model village itself, within which can just be seen a model of the model village in the model village. The other thing that sets this place apart are the trees, sculpted to appropriately scaled dimensions, and at this time of year beautifully arrayed across a spectrum of vibrant greens. Nobody said the place had to be a perfect representation of anything so there are bright Montgolfier balloons hanging in several corners, just because. But it's the variety of mini-people that tips Godshill from good to great, of a quality you'd flock to in London were they displayed as "art". Both humorous and photogenic, there's so much here for the model village aficionado to adore. by train: Shanklin, then by bus: 2, 3
Yes, I have opened my package now, but blimey don't new computers take a long time to set up. I've got most of the connections attached, and tried to remember all the passwords I last entered years ago, and ditched the pre-loaded security trial in favour of a free service, and tweaked various other settings to make things as familiar as possible, but I haven't got round to switching email or transferring photos, and loads of other finicky things, so I still haven't had time to write about Saturday's day trip, sorry. Have four more photos instead.
