Isle of Wight Circumnavigation 10-12 october 2009

we made it round!
more to follow...

A pause to consider the purpose of the Explorations;

I set out with the intention of discovering new things about life in Europe in the 21st century. The initial idea was that the kayak would transport me to points along the coast where I could discover things. I have discovered a fair bit so far, not least the existence of many parallel realities occupied by different groups of people, of which the unique world of the sea kayaker is but one.
I don't really know if there's that much to discover on the Isle of Wight that I didn't already know about before paddling round it. Most places remind one of somewhere else, but maybe that's part of the Island's special charm; a microcosm of the UK, our continent in miniature.
A view across the Solent to Fawley Oil refinery. Could be Sheppey, or Trieste. A broken down wall on the north facing beach slowly eroded by the waves. Remains perhaps of some military installation and it could be the Adriatic. Seaside resorts reflect their counterparts along the South coast; even Ryde steam railway looks like the tube. The cliffs could well be Dorset, the secluded beach Scotland or Brittany, the Needles – the Needles could only be the Needles (or maybe a set of broken teeth).

We set out from Lymington on an unseasonably warm Saturday morning, brisk tail wind and flood tide carrying us up the middle of the Solent, past flotillas of yachts with bright pink sails, bright blue water and up to Cowes in under 2 hours. There we negotiated the ferry and stopped on a little beach just around the corner for a quick breather, next to a crumbling wall and trees growing down almost into the water, having largely avoided any contact with humanity till this point. Followed the coast round to Ryde and tried to find somewhere out of the wind to eat our sandwiches. I did find a chocolate shop / café run unexpectedly by polite and charming American ladies who assured me that the sand off my feet was “nothing a broom can't fix”. Outside, we were also treated to the sight of an animated bowling pin handing out leaflets with little stick-like arms, which made the day of the young waitress (and made me laugh a lot too), before I headed back out to consume – in true “explorations” style - cappuccino and home-made cake on the beach.
Onwards, under the pier with the tube trains on it, past the hoverport (why did they never really catch on?) past a solid nineteenth century fort off Bembridge, we were delighted to find that there was now a strong tidal stream flowing round the end of the island. People were strolling and fishing in the afternoon sunshine, giving the feel of the end of a long summer day rather than early on a short autumn one. Culver cliffs were unexpectedly spectacular and we were pleasantly surprised to find a small tide race with waves where we hadn't known there was one.
According to plan we camped on the soft rabbit-cropped turf amongst the mole hills just next to the perimeter fence of Yaveland sailing club. Not according to plan we carried the boats and gear up the cliffs because we didn't spot the slipway. It was soon dark and we had soon eaten Tim's curry, so we went off in search of a pub. No mean feat. The main drag of Sandown yielded nothing but huge empty bars and arcades. On the point of giving up we did finally spot a pub in a side street and collapsed around a table clutching pints of ale. We were shortly followed in by a scraggy bloke with a guitar who set up and started singing a random mixture of folk and rock with the odd country track creeping into the repertoire. Looking round we started noticing other things: we seemed to be the youngest people in the pub by quite a few years; the walls were adorned with pictures of second world war planes. And the odd St George's cross. A good proportion of the punters had unusually short haircuts. But the beer was tasty enough and we didn't seem to be bothering anyone, so we stayed. A trip round the back, though revealed a whole new world: there was another room, no singer but a pool table instead and everyone in this one aged under 30, or maybe even 20. By this point we were on the verge of falling asleep in our seats though, so we went back to our tents to fall asleep there instead.
It was now that we discovered the uniqueness of our choice of campsite, a few hundred yards from the Isle of Wight zoo. I drifted off to sleep listening to the calls of unknown animals and dreaming I was in a Tanzanian game reserve, with the comfort of knowing, however, that there wasn't too much risk of being eaten by a leopard. And what does this tell us about modern life? I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Next morning, woken by the shrieks and whoops of feeding time, and smug at our amazing progress of day one, we got up late, got on the water late and found ourselves immediately slogging into a solid head wind and rapidly strengthening tide, 4 weetabix not being anything like enough to keep body and soul together I enforced a snack break to eat half a pound of marzipan: first good move of the day. As we went round the headland before Ventnor into unprotected water we found ourselves battling waves as well as wind and the tide running fast enough to slow our progress to a crawl. Inching along parallel to, but not too close to, the sea wall, we ground our way towards Ventnor, clearing ever larger mounds of water and becoming progressively more dispirited as the bollards on the wall moved backwards barely perceptibly. Ahead we could see posts at Ventnor harbour, but they seemed not to be getting any closer. Gusts of rain drops started to fall and everything was grey, punctuated only by white foam.
After three hours paddling we managed to sneak into the calm if malodorous waters of the harbour, tied our boats to a fence as defence against the rising tide and sat dripping in a café, eating fish and chips and watching waves dumping on the beach outside. Still hoping to make it past St. Catherine's Point before dark we got back into our boats and headed onwards, still against the wind still against the tide still against wind against tide. An hour passed and we had not really made much progress; the tide was due to slacken but not till it would be almost dark and after the point would be mile after mile of dumping waves on a beach I'd never seen before. To our right was a small beach; I convinced my fellow paddlers to stop and reconsider, surfed towards the shore then swam the last bit in the interest of protecting my boat from the shingle. The water was surprisingly warm and the shore break surprisingly rough. The beach however turned out to be a pleasant enough spot and we decided to drag the boats up, stop for the night (it was 4pm by now). The clouds then began to clear and the wet , dark day became a clear, gentle evening with a golden sunset over St. Catherine's Point light house still lying a long way to the west.
Finding a place to camp wasn't so easy. There was a field at the top of the cliffs but it was full of cows. Discretion being the better part of valour and in fear of an angry farmer (there was a small gate with a sign on each side: one said “no entry”, the other “no exit”) we decided to sleep on the beach. This turned out to be really rather comfortable and even had some larger stones placed by an earlier camping party where we could sit and cook dinner, and later watch the shooting stars and the milky way and passing satellites unencumbered by light from any city. It almost felt like I was in Brittany again. We shared our camp site with enormous numbers of sand-hoppers, which leapt into our wine, our pasta, our tea and our tents. The evening was warm, which was perhaps why they were so lively; I went to sleep early to the sound of sand-hoppers pattering like rain against my tent. And woke again at 5.30 and stuck my head out of the tent to see small waves lapping softly against the beach a few yards away, Orion directly ahead and a bright, clear crescent moon.
We had a lot of distance to make up and packed and left as soon as it was light (only slowed down a fraction by John's malfunctioning Arctic petrol stove) and this time made better progress, with a north wind strong enough to need a skeg, but not to slow us down much. We hit St Catherine's point on a slackening tide and missed any tide race, then made our laborious way up the somewhat featureless coast. For a place so near to industrial Southampton it is surprisingly bleak. The season despite the sunshine seemed to have turned overnight to autumn on this exposed section and the windblown slopes could almost have been Scotland. Not much sign of human activity either beyond a distant radio mast and the occasional building tucked into a chine in the cliffs.
After 5 hours steady paddling we made it into Freshwater Bay, full of boats (including Owen of Isle of Wight Sea Kayaking) and settled ourselves against a warm chalk cliff to eat lunch and watch the locals trying to decide what to do with two young swans having a rest on the beach - “should we call the RSPCA?”. Then onward, round the Needles where there was a fair bit of flow and some interesting waves, back up the Solent and in to Lymington marina at 5, moored boats resting on the tide in the calm of a mild early autumn evening.
And what did I discover this time? Reading this through again, there seems to be a theme on this trip of places feeling like other places. Too much travel in the age globalisation? Wanting to always be somewhere other than where you are now? An overactive imagination? Or maybe the physical expression of an unconscious wish of the islanders to be able to believe that all life is really there in those few square miles. As perhaps it is. Maybe on one level every coastline is indeed the same, having more in common with other coastlines than with the land that lies behind it, land that from the perspective of a boat moving at sea level can only be guessed at. Perhaps the experience of paddling over the sea binds together all places that it touches. And I am left with a sense of gentle autumn sunlight on soft blue water, of safe familiar southern English landscapes, always just a short paddle away and I have already forgotten what it feels like to force yourself to keep going when you would much rather stop for a rest, when your progress is snail-like and any hesitation will just make things harder and you know you have no choice but to keep slogging on. But I always forget this and so I always keep coming back for more.