Isle of Delight

Something pulls me back to the Isle of Wight year on year. Perhaps it’s the first real holiday I remember: the one that haunts my dreams in technicolour: snatches of Blackgang Chine by lamplight from the time before bits of it fell into the sea; the coloured sands of Alum Bay, fragmented like the glass vial that once held its pastel powders, filled, then smashed by unsteady toddler paws. The memories are jagged, like the Needles and the shards of sugar rock we gobbled before scampering around like loons, high as kites, it all ending in tears.

I scan the island, lush and Jurassic with ancient trees, for glimpses of an idyllic past tainted by loss: my father showing off to to his new girlfriend – herself, a child of the 60s, happy enough to camp – by booking up a smart B and B, still only 30, he could barely afford. All four of us slept in the same room. My sister Katie remembers the adults locking us in at night so they could go down for dinner.

By the end, crotchety on broken sleep and the expense of jollifying the weather, he lost his temper with my four year old sister and I wailing at the momentary loss of our parked car, and the Bambi-shaped helium balloons that slipped our grasp and headed, tragically into the ozone; the journey ferrywards was sullen despite our drifting in and out of sleep, only to miss our booking and have to wait for the next.

Last year we took a May half term-day trip and it was glorious. A bright and breezy crossing with bacon sarnies on deck followedby a drive to pretty Ventnor beach, where we exposed winter bleached skin to the first rays of the year. We lay on sunwarmed, fine ground pebbles and breathed in the medicinal salt air. Blackgang Chime by daylight was as old-fashionedly charming, if slightly more dogeared, as remembered and we returned tired but blissful after an evening crossing to my mother’s Southampton summer home where we we staying.

This year, we decided to camp. Refreshed (and temporarily impoverished) by an enforced period of worklessness, I had, nevertheless, the wherewithal to even contemplate the effort required to create such a movable feast. A chance chat to a school mum who had recently made the same trip determined us to take the plunge.

Tom got stuck into the details, buying a new tent, which served us swimmingly despite the dubious weather, a convection hob which made daily cooked breakfasts possible, and enough sausages to last us till Christmas, while all I contributed was two substandard disposable BBQs bought on the hop from Londis (genuinely appalling, by the way) and an all-weather wardrobe for the rest of us. We needed it. The deluge on London the day before we left filled me with pessimism, and the weather continued overcast and moody for our midday crossing and for the duration of Tom unpacking our packed-to-the rafters estate at the Nodes Point campsite in St Helens. But we lucked out with the best pitch on the site – a gentle jog down from the comprehensive loo blocks onto a daisy strewn lawn, jutting out on the beach, it was pretty, clean and only slightly rankling to my snobbish sensibilities: the mobile homes are separate from the outward bound camping types, next to the on-site restaurant-come-clubhouse with its garish penny slot machines, and “interesting” entertainments. If we came again, we would probably choose to stay nearer the pretty villages of Shanklin and Ventnor than the wilder, rougher North East tip.

With proper sheets and duvets, blow up double mattresses (automatically inflatable ones would have saved us lots of puff and bother), and separate sleeping pods for the kids, as well as a carpet entrance way, Tom built his pouting princess and two highly strung offspring a palace good enough to protect us from any weather. With spirits reasonably high, we went crabbing in spite of the spitting gloom, and booked a late dinner at the nearby Baywatch restaurant, where, despite slow, busy service, we dined well on local catch (me) and burgers (the others) and returned to our tent dry and full and knackered.

We woke to the pitter of raindrops but keeping our peckers up, Tom whipped up scrambled eggs on toast (he brought the toaster and the electric hook up for which we paid a modest extra fee was inspired.) We headed straight out to the indoor pool which was full to the brim with flabby bodies so much so the tiny slide was kept shut and the bath-warm water felt brackish. Overheated and tetchy at the rules governing shower gel in the  poolside showers, I got out early in a strop, whereupon the sun came out and dried my hair as I sunned myself on the grass waiting for the others to finish their swim.

The nearby Seaview Wildlife Encounter was right up Ava’s street and she spent a lovely afternoon stroking giant mouse-like wallabies, funny-faced alpaca and feeding fowl of all shapes and sizes. Jonah’s narrow interest was only semi stoked, but he was more fired up by a go-karting session at Wight Karting  despite coming eighth out of nine more experienced drivers when he and Tom returned in the late afternoon, having found it too busy earlier in the day. He returned to the site thoughtful but in good spirits, where Ava and I had been dozing in the sun and reading Alison Moore’s hauntingly apropos The Lighthouse.

Shoddy BBQs notwithstanding, Tom manged to cook up a storm of sausages and beans and Jonah and Ava, jacked up on marshmallows and digestive biscuits, played out till late with some other kids on the site.

Despite a rowdy dawn chorus, we slept in late and with the weather again threatening,we planned a magical mystery tour across the island to Needles Park near Alum Bay with only minor gripes from Jonah when we were held up by the odd patch of traffic. Refreshed by a cuppa in the Marconi Cafe, which I remembered from my childhood (my Dad once worked for Marconi, or so I believe) we bought a sheet of tickets for the park’s olde worlde attractions – a creaking cable car down the cliff edge to view the (rather unspectacular, but still worth a trip) coloured cliffs, , a labour intensive demonstration of glass blowing and taffy puling at the sweet factory given by two sniggering tattooed types who looked rather better suited to the lab from Breaking Bad than to the audience of beleaguered parents and clambering kids who viewed their sugarcraft from behind sound-proofed glass.

I insisted on buying a plastic cat for Ava to fill with coloured sands, (less likely to break than my glass 80s version)  and with lips smacking around sherbet lemons, we got back in the car for a return visit to Blackgang Chine; its newly refreshed Area 5 Dinosaur encounter only slightly justified the £60-odd-quid-the-lot entrance fee. Yet we found bits of it we’d never encountered on earlier tracks round the mostly low tech theme park. Cowboy Town, with its politically incorrectly Native American settlement was run amok by kids and their dads waving pellet guns; the snakes and ladders games had us all stiffly slipping down the cliff edge on narrow steel slides a little too snug for my backside. Fairyland had me leaping on toad stalls, and as the sun got hotter, we returned footsore yet smiling for one last go down the ‘plughole’ water slide.

 

 

By the time we reached Sandown Beach, the sun was waning but the kids had half and hour with a bucket and spade while we snacked on crispy potato skins and beer at a nearby pub overlooking the not-yet charming pier. We returned to the campsite in need of the pre-made chilli we’d brought, which warmed up in a jiffy on the convection hob before collapsing at sundown after a glug or two of warm white wine (a mini- fridge is a must-bring for next time).

The last day and we returned, after fairly efficient packing up and Tom’s pancetta pittas, to picturesque Ventnor bay, which seems in the process of a facelift, with the odd bit of scaffolding heralding better times ahead. The sun threatened to come out, and while waiting, we had coffee at Besty’s and Spinky’s Cafe next to the iconic Isle of Wight paddling pool, which I remembered hopping round in the early 80s.

 

The pebbled beach proved a hit after initially disappointing the kids, but as they searched for sea glass with stolid determination for a full hour, we finished the day basking in the sun with a feast of fresh fried fish and chips from the kiosk next to the fish shop.

I didn’t want to leave, having waited for that perfect moment for so long, but as we rounded the cliff in our once again overloaded car, I caught a glimpse of the white fronted hotel and the clifftop car park where I once lost my balloon and my  innocence as my poor, grumpy, father who had only recently lost his wife, lost his temper. I know now, he just wanted everything to be perfect for his two little girls, but a holiday in the British weather can never really hope to be. But accepting this, the Isle of Wight is as good as it can be: an isle full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

We missed our ferry dallying on the beach and stopped off at Katie’s house for a chilly BBQ and sleep over on re-inflated mattresses, reminiscing about old times over cold white wine, and planning our return together again, this time from the very different perspective as the grownups.