The first light of the day was supposed to be at Egypt point, at the far north of the island, but it was actually my dad sparking up his first cigarette as we watched the boats running up and down the River Medina. A nearby clock chimed, setting us on our way.
Egypt point is thought to have got its name from a group of sixteenth century gypsies who inhabited the area and were known at the time as ‘Egyptians’. It was less than half a mile up-river from our hotel, but due to the conspiring of the road system, getting there was like driving through one of those mazes where one has to begin in the opposite direction.
We descended from leafy suburban lanes to an empty, tranquil coastline with a wide, curving, ‘made for coaches’ road around it.
The lighthouse is little more than a beacon which operated from 1897–1989. It consists of a thin red tube upon a squat cylindrical base, with a white, square box perched clumsily on top, anchored to the ground with a few white-painted struts.
From here, we continued westward, with the road narrowing into a tiny lane around the coves and the village of Gurnard. Moving away from the sea, things became more pastoral, with green fields and woods in abundance. We were perhaps getting a glimpse at the ‘real’ Isle of Wight, away from the tourist trail at last.
This respite was brief, for soon we were joining the slow-moving traffic on the A3054. This is the island’s principal east/west route, and I mischievously wondered how things would be if a six-lane M3054 was built to deal with the traffic. Imagine doing 70mph on the Isle of Wight – you would be able to cross the whole island in under 20 minutes!
Of course, it is the diminutive size of the island that protects it from such modern intrusions. It wouldn’t take a lot of building to dramatically alter the feel of the place, hence the only new housing projects we would spot were relatively small.
We waited for several sailing boats to pass the raised bridge at Shalfleet, and briefly detoured up a private road to try to catch a glimpse of Hurst Castle and its lighthouse on the mainland, visible across the Solent. There was a small development of salubrious homes (read ‘Yuppie residences’ if you wish) at the end of the lane from which to point our camera lens before continuing via Yarmouth and Totland to the Needles – the island's most westerly point.
At Alum Bay, there is a car park and a small theme park with a breathtaking chair-lift ride over the cliffs, famous for their multiple layers of coloured sand. After attempting to hard-sell 'England and Wales in a Flash' to a friendly car-park attendant, we stomped off up the combined footpath and bus-lane that runs out along the grassy headland for around a mile. And boy, was it windy!
At the point where the white cliffs disintegrate into a series of chalk stacks, we savoured our first view of the lighthouse, directly ahead. In front of it stands a fort built in 1862.
The red and white striped lighthouse rises 102 feet from the sea and has a helicopter landing pad on top. Built in 1859, it replaced an earlier cliff-top lighthouse that was forever shrouded in mist. The present light stands beyond two brilliant white chunks of rock which rise out of the sea like chalk icebergs.
As we explored the southern side of the headland, we became entangled with a large group of elderly tourists, swarming like bees around the viewpoints, giving off a general hubbub of conversational small talk.
A smoothly curving concrete wall is all that remains of a former engine testing site for rockets (used from 1956–1971). The launching tests themselves took place on the other side of the world in Woomera, Australia. These weren’t the only experiments to be carried out in the vicinity. Back at Alum Bay, a plaque marks the location of the former wireless telegraph station where Marconi did a bit of tinkering around in the late 1890s.
Having absorbed all these facts by cranial osmosis, I glanced around to find that my dad had vanished over the top of the hill, drawn zombie-like towards the old keeper’s cottages - a terrace of four or five dwellings. Rather cheekily we wandered around the backyards, and some of the occupants even chatted to us. But once the approaching babble of voices chanting ‘rhubarb rhubarb’ could be heard, we quickly descended back to the path for fear that we might get swept up in the melee and find ourselves bundled into a Shearings coach bound Bournemouth!
Our next port of call was St Catherine’s Point at the southern corner of the island.
The A3055 follows the coast from west to south to east, effectively a scenic alternative to the A3054. The eastern half of this route consists of a series of popular holiday resorts from Ventnor to Ryde. The west side is very different though, being the island’s most sparsely populated quadrant.
At one point we were diverted onto lanes where the cliff road was subsiding. The terrain became quite wild, resmbling moorland, with the tall hills of the south ever-present on the skyline.
The turning for St Catherine’s is just beyond the village of Niton. We parked opposite a charming little pub in a leafy hamlet and walked along the lane to the lighthouse, descending panoramically to open fields. Our tour guide and his wife were ready and waiting.
Like the Needles light, this octagonal 1838 lighthouse replaced a much higher structure, but even this new light was often shrouded in mist, so the tower was eventually lowered from 120 feet to 86 feet by removing several sections of it.
A second shorter tower, open at the bottom, with tall arches, was added to house the fog signal in 1932, looking like something from an M.C.Escher painting. Both towers have turreted masonry.
Before we went to investigate the light's predecessor, it was time for a pint. The dusky wooden interior of the pub provided a mellow ambience for us and a solitary fellow drinker. Pubs like this have so much atmosphere that they seem cosy even when empty, yet other busier pubs, according to a friend of mine, have about “as much atmosphere as a municipal lavatory”. Sadly it is the more rustic kind of pub that seems to be under threat the most.
We returned across the pretty lawn to the car, accompanied by gentle birdsong, and backtracked to Blackgang Chine, where there is a theme park nestled between the cliffs. Our theme was merely to park the car and climb the steep, desolate footpath on the opposite side of the road.
My father’s heavy strained breaths were lost in the intensifying wind, and at last we reached the 1323 oratory which looked like an octagonal stone rocket with its pointed top, perched on one of Wight's highest points. The sides even look as though they are adorned with stone booster rockets! Bar the 46 A.D. ‘pharos’ in the grounds of Dover Castle, this is England's olderst standing lighthouse
It all came about when a ship from France crashed nearby and its cargo of monastic wine miraculously disappeared and ended up being sold to the islanders. The pope ordered that the culprits build a lighthouse to stop further ships crashing, as penance (and they were expecting a dozen Hail Mary's!). Consequently the tower has even been used as a chapel.
With the late afternoon sun still bright, we drove inland, passing farms until we reached the main road at Godshill.
Carrisbrooke is joined to Wight's capital, Newport, by unbroken housing. Yet somehow it still maintains the character of a busy tourist village. The pub we tried didn’t really fit this notion of quaintness though, with three shaven-headed thirty-somethings providing a continual flow of bawdy masculinity. This wasn’t quite what we were looking for!
And so we returned to Cowes and poured ourselves into a wooden seat to peruse the menu. In my best French accent I ordered the moules mariniere.
Stunned by the huge mound of black cracked shells I was presented with, I proceeded to extract the tasty mussels from within, while my father tried to ply me with additional food, stating that a plate of under-nourished whelks wouldn’t fill me up. After his breathless gasps I'd witnessed on that barren hillside earlier, I took this advice, like my meal, with a pinch of salt!
If you are enjoying these 'lighthouse tours' but fancy something a little more polished to read, 'England and Wales in a Flash' humorously documents our visits to every lighthouse around the mainland coast. It's sequel 'Bordering on Lunacy' covering Southern Scotland will be published shortly. Also available are 'Mud Sweat and Beers' (hiking/humour) and 'Seven Dreams of Reality' (dreamlike fiction). Track all 3 down on Amazon!
- Adam and Roger Colton
