went on holiday in their own country. Any time they had more than a long weekend, they were on a plane to France, Spain, Italy ... anywhere with a better chance of sun. I, in love with every inch of my new land, just couldn't believe how little most people had visited of their home turf.
More than 25 years later, I have become them. Sure, I still do more sightseeing on the home front than the average Brit, but my husband and I have never done more than a long weekend on British soil. Until now. We hadn't planned any holidays until September, but the first half of the year has been filled with unexpected challenges and we needed a week of downtime to recover. We also needed to keep the budget in check and didn't have the energy to go far. The answer? The Isle of Wight.
The diamond-shaped island nestles against the South Coast of England facing the historic port of Portsmouth. We can go from home to the ferry in under an hour, then it's a 40-minute crossing. It's just two miles across the Solent at its narrowest point, but tides and traffic flow demand a longer V-shaped route. Brace yourself for pricey fares, and check with hotels who can often get you deals of half price or more. Locals boast that it's the most expensive ferry crossing-by-distance over any water in the world. I'm convinced they do this to discourage day-trippers and other "inappropriate" visitors. (The ridiculously expensive toll bridge to Sanibel Island, Florida comes to mind.)
It's a relatively tiny place. At just 148 square miles, you could fit more than four Isles of Wight inside the greater London area encircled by the M25. Being so close and well-connected to the mainland, you'd expect it to be much the same as the rest of Hampshire. But the Isle of Wight is gloriously different.
Many people describe it as Britain stuck in a time warp, circa 1950. It's not quite as antiquated as all that. I saw a handful of new housing estates and schools, there are a few grocery superstores and the main town of Newport has a shopping mall and plenty of modern brands. We discovered a handful of great restaurants, including one "on trend" enough to fit smoothly into London.But most of the island is, undeniably, a throwback. Shops and restaurants are locally owned and one-of-a kind. I can't remember the last time I walked down a high street that was almost entirely filled with one-off establishments. Here, it's the norm. People talk to each other. Service is fantastically genial, though often a bit unsophisticated. Thatched cottages abound. Quaint tea shops do a thriving business. Souvenir shops sell the same tourist tat I saw in their windows on my first visit here 30 years ago. Given how badly the boxes of the Lilliput Lane miniature cottages had faded in one window, they might have been the same items. There are an enormous number of retirees on the island (one suspects most of the permanent population has pushed past 50) but the number of families on holiday with young children ... presumably trying to give them a taste of a sweeter, simpler childhood ... brings down the averages.
The overwhelming vibe on the island is late 19th century, thanks to its popularity with Queen Victoria. She and Albert built their family retreat here, she visited regularly throughout her widowhood and eventually died here. The architecture is heavily from that era, including town-scapes of Victorian row houses that could be in London and plenty of Arts and Crafts suburban villas with gingerbread details. But perhaps even more significant to the island's future was the endorsement of the queen's doctor, who proclaimed sea bathing a cure for a range of illnesses and said this was the place to do it.
Here, a cataclysmic landslide near the end of the last ice age created a long shelf of coastline underneath a towering ridge of chalk. This "Undercliff", about five miles from Bonchurch to Niton, is essentially a giant sun trap creating a unique micro climate. It is, on average, 5 degrees celsius warmer here than the rest of southern England. The weather, the gardens and the architecture that followed all have a faint whiff of the Côte d'Azur, as if someone had awarded Cannes a "do over" and put it in the hands of sensible, unpretentious English people sworn to give you good value for money.
For an island you can circumnavigate in a few hours there is, however, a remarkable variety. Cowes, beloved of the yachting fraternity, is a bustling and affluent place full of trendy shops and restaurants and a vast range of places to drink. And, on any fine summer's evening, a vast number of drunken sailors. From Fishbourne to Shanklin, towns run around the eastern point of the diamond in a surprisingly charmless and almost continuous urban sprawl; neither the affluence of the Undercliff nor the sailing fraternity has reached here. The seafront areas look a bit down-at-heel and, were it not for the occasional, glorious views of the English Channel, you could be in any drab, hardscrabble bit of outer London. This part reminds you of the decline that most English seaside towns have faced since cheap airfares took their customers to the continent.Yet on Shanklin's southern edge you'll find the old village, a cluster of pastel-painted thatched cottages in a wooded dell that is a hugely photogenic. It's a Disney fairy tale version of ye olde England and a must for any island visitor. Ventnor and St. Lawrence, just beyond, have obviously seen a recent influx of cash for building restoration and you sense that tourists are now sharing the space with a lot of affluent retirees.
Inland, the landscape and mood changes once again. It's almost entirely agricultural, with rolling fields, forested hills and bosky dells inhabited by tiny, ancient villages. There's little Victorian incursion here; many farm houses look like they've been standing since King Charles I was held captive in nearby Carisbrooke Castle. Every village seems to have a sprinkling of late 20th century bungalows as well, but usually they're well enough dispersed and have nice enough gardens to blend in. It's all reminiscent of deepest, darkest Dorset, just over the water to the northwest. Placid cows and sheep decorate the landscape, but they decorate plates, too. Local meat is on most menus, as is the well-known produce of the island's garlic farm.
There are two vineyards and one distillery making the most of the island's bounty. Adgestone's wines are slightly better, and their gardens with views of vines and the distant sea are designed for lazy afternoons of drinking the product on site. But the team at the older Rosemary Vineyards is a friendlier bunch with a bigger shop offering a whole range of IoW delicacies. They're the same people behind Mermaid Gin. The distillery used to be in the vineyard but has now moved to its own place. Of all we tasted, it was the gin that proved most worthy of bringing home ... particularly the pink version produced with a subtle infusion of fresh strawberries. (Though we did buy a few bottles of Adgestone's blackberry and lavender country wine for summer spritzers.)
Accommodation, however, can be surprisingly tricky. The rental cottage market was sparse compared to other top destinations. Most of the properties I liked weren't in walking distance to dining options, while the ones that were conveniently located lacked charm. So I switched to hotels and B&Bs. You really feel the "lost in time" mood here; boutique hotels and hip little B&Bs are few, old-style places with stolid, golden oak furniture and big florals abound. Most web sites show photos of interiors that look like they haven't been updated since the 1980s. When you do stumble on the rare property that looks modernised, it's stupidly expensive. (The good news is that the island overall offers one of the cheapest holiday options in the south of England, with most rooms under £100 a night.)
Once on the island, I saw a lot of places that hadn't showed up on my internet searches, then looked them up to find rudimentary web sites. My hunch: most places here are run by older people for whom social media, web design and search engine optimisation are alien concepts. There's vast potential here for someone with a modernising touch.
We ended up at the Eversley, a family-run hotel on the western edge of Ventnor next to its Victorian park and a 10- to 15-minute stroll to the waterfront with pubs, restaurants and promenades. The less fit should be warned that, according to my FitBit, the short walk includes an incline the equivalent of nine flights of stairs. But that's reality on the IoW. It's hilly. To the west of the town's bay, the Undercliff plunges to a deep valley, which rises to another hill, which then falls off in cliffs down to the water. The Eversley and the park sit in this deep valley. The hotel has its back to the seaward hillside, with gardens spilling down the slope, a pool at the bottom, and a path up to a private hilltop lawn with expansive views of the channel and a gate out onto the coastal path.We upgraded to a superior room (No. 17), which definitely felt like someone had recently gone to the effort to get a boutique hotel look. The bathroom featured sleek tiles and an enormous claw-footed tub. The bedroom had a leather sofa, coffee table and large-screen TV for lounging, as well as a super-king bed. The room's real glory, however, was its huge windows looking across the valley to the Undercliff, and the towering Victorian ceilings. It was also tremendously convenient for the dogs, with quick access down a short hallway to a back yard and the upper reaches of the garden.
Once you're settled in to Ventnor you'll find a surprisingly good restaurant scene and some fabulous things to do. I'll write about those in my next articles.
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