Travel
Long known as a bucket-and-spade destination steeped in Victoriana, the Isle of Wight is looking to the future with environmental tourism
By Logan Gourlay
Nothing on the Isle of Wight is quite as it seems. It’s early morning and I’m standing on the water’s edge at Newtown Creek, but this isn’t the coastal view the island is historically best known for. Seaside paraphernalia, amusem*nt arcades and risqué postcards are nowhere to be seen. Instead, meandering inlets are fringed with the blue tinge of sea aster, the adjacent fields are in-filled with classic hay meadow species such as the superbly named corky-fruited water-dropwort, whose white flowers sit atop a bolt-upright, metre-high stem.
Beyond the brindled cross-hairs of reeds and rushes, where a little egret has settled down for a spot of fish catching, the soft light is broken by the silhouette of a larger, more menacing parcel of feathers. For the Isle of Wight is the location for the re-introduction of Britain’s largest bird of prey, the white-tailed eagle, and the waters of the creek here are replete with grey mullet, which seem to appeal to the young white-tailed eagles.
The process of bringing this species back to the south coast of England – the last known nesting pair was seen in 1780 on Culver Down in the east of the island – began in 2019 with the introduction of six young birds. By 2025, 30 or more will have been released in a programme led by the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, designed to fill in not so much a missing tooth as a gaping hole in England’s coastal ecosystems. The island was chosen because of the superb foraging opportunities in the Solent, its quiet areas for immature birds and nesting sites in woods and cliffs.
A wildlife-rich Isle of Wight? The notion prompted sneering in some media, mainly by people with preconceptions that are extremely outdated. In truth, however, anyone who hasn’t visited the Isle of Wight since childhood may be in for a pleasant surprise. To reach the water, I had walked through the hamlet of Newton, a rare example of a medieval town that failed economically due to a combination of plague, changing river flows and ever-marauding French neighbours. Many of its original green lanes survive and amid its grid-like Norman street pattern stands a 17th-century town hall with no town, rescued from physical collapse during the 1930s by the intervention of the eccentric Ferguson’s Gang, a group of anonymous masked women who raised funds to buy property for the National Trust. They would burst into Trust meetings and plant a sack of cash on the table, RobinHood-style, with strict instructions on how it should be spent.
The island is full of such quirks. Its oddly shaped area of outstanding natural beauty (now termed a ‘natural landscape’) is the only example to comprise five areas of unconnected coast and downland, and offers a version of the most attractive bits and pieces of much of lowland England: the chalk downs of the South Downs, the marshy coastline of the New Forest, the estuaries of Sussex, Kent and Devon, and geology to match Dorset’s more heralded Jurassic coast. An unusually high percentage of land – 75 per cent – is covered, protected or managed for its wildlife and ecology. The island enjoys UN biosphere status (which technically puts it on a par with the Okavango Delta), a designation that acknowledges meaningful attempts by humans to coexist with the natural world through community engagement and economic activity sympathetic to the landscape.
Enjoying this article? We have thousands more for you.
Get immediate access to over 1,000 Geographical magazines in our archive back to 1935.
Sign up today and you will soon be travelling back through time reading all our amazing features of the last eight decades PLUS... you also get to enjoy every new issue of Geographical each month going forward in both print and digital formats.
Simply press the button below to choose the perfect package for you.
I’d begun my visit to the island nearby, arriving by ferry in Yarmouth, whose population of fewer than 900 makes it the second-smallest town in the UK. The river West Yar decants into the Solent here and I followed its marshy edges upstream until its headwaters bumped into the solid lump of chalk that rises from sea level into the magnificent Tennyson Down. The landscape here is extraordinary. ‘An earthquake poised in mid-explosion’ is how the late poet laureate John Betjeman described it and everything appears disjointed, as if tossed about by huge tectonic convulsions. Shudderingly steep cliffs, whaleback hills and golden beaches bump up against each other, the islandcollapsing into narrow gullies, known as chines, which rush to the sea, or crumbling into the Needles, the incisor-shaped chalk pinnacles which punch up from the Solent. As wave after wave thumps into these chalk cliffs, the waters turn the colour of milk chocolate.
This scenery has held an incredibly enduring appeal. In the 19th century, nearby Freshwater was home to the poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who would stride up the down to which he gave his name for his daily constitutional. Freshwater also appealed to the Victorian ‘Great Brains’ –creative and intellectual types drawn here to pay homage to Tennyson and wax lyrical about the island’s natural majesty. Among those beating a path to Tennyson’s door were the pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt, Prince Albert, artist Edward Lear, Charles Kingsley, social reformer and author of The Water Babies, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, although Lewis Carroll was given the cold shoulder for lampooning Tennyson’s poetry. The tradition continued half a mile down the road, where photographer Julia Margaret Cameron entertained luminaries such as Charles Darwin and Virginia Woolf (her great-niece) at her home, Dimbola.
Yet while one moment you may get carried away with a rather highfalutin ‘at one with nature’ ethos, the next you may encounter a Victorian seaside amusem*nt park. Adjacent to Tennyson Down, the Needles Landmark Attraction offers a rich Victoriana of candy-floss stalls, arcades and the spine-chilling but definitely memory-making chairlift. Some visitors find this juxtaposition intrusive but for most islanders, they seem to rub along perfectly well, all being part of the island DNA.
These two sides of the same coin are apparent on the east coast, too. Stretching for the best part of eight kilometres along the edge of Sandown Bay, the twin towns of Sandown and Shanklin represent the epicentre of the island’s traditional seaside appeal – amusem*nt arcades and, in its heyday, hugely popular vaudeville. You can still find these of course, but you may do so while sipping a craft pale ale brewed by Julie Jones-Evans of the town’s arts space Boojum & Snark (the name is a nod to the nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Caroll, who lived just across the road).
I walk along Sandown Bay and it’s apparent that the sea here isn’t always benign, for a winter storm can leave the beach looking like a team of bulldozers has turned it over. Natural processes of erosion are being exacerbated by climate change and ever more extreme weather.
Pinned onto the breakwaters and groynes are what appear to be concrete sinks but are in fact artificial rock pools known as vertipools. The ingenious idea, explains Ian Boyd, a local ecologist, is to provide a refuge for shoreline creatures which are facing ever higher tides, such as the shanny, crabs, sponges, sea squirtsand seaweeds. As sea levels rise, many inhabitants of the inter-tidal zone are increasingly inundated, overwashed for longer, with less respite between the ebbs and flows of tides. The vertipools give them a higher berth and metal versions are being applied to the sheet piling of ports and marinas around the island. The measure is typical of the small, artisan, craft-led approach to biodiversity on the island. Elsewhere you may notice ‘nature bricks’, textured polygons embedded into coastal walls to give coastal wildlife a foothold.
The island sees around two million visitors a year but is visibly shifting from bucket and spade to ‘outdoorsy’ tourism of the boots and bikes variety. The island has the densest network of footpaths of any comparable area in the UK and boasts two walking festivals, while that bundle of animal magnetism the red squirrel is visible pretty much everywhere. ‘There is such depth to locality on the island,’ says Boyd. ‘You have multiple mini-islands – that layered experience is really tangible. You can walk, cycle across a chequerboard of landscapes, of river valleys, downlands. It is the proverbial patchwork garden of England.’
But fundamental challenges are beginning to come to the fore. The primary concern is a demographic trend, described as ‘catastrophic’ by Boyd, with twice as many people dying each year on the island as are born. Of the 5,000 inward migrants from the mainland each year, 75 per cent are aged 60 or older. ‘We are haemorrhaging young people,’ he says, ‘Tourism is amazing and the island has so much to offer but it is increasingly seasonal and it is generally minimum wage.’
Boyd feels a watershed has been crossed. ‘A lot of the island lives on nostalgia, but that nostalgia risks killing the island off once and for all. Victorian railings or buildings can become a deadweight, a chore to be painted, maintained each year at high cost. A celebration of nostalgia is meaningful but it becomes more valuable if we see it as a continuum to create future heritage, an optimistic vision for the next 10–15 years.’
To address this, Boyd feels that a small island seeking to attract young talent and fresh ideas needs to work harder to keep those it has and more effectively plug into the tens of thousands of students at the south coast universities of Southampton and Portsmouth. ‘If only we had a huge, highly educated youthful population on our doorstep we could connect with,’ he says with a wry smile.
Aside from running her brewery, Jones-Evans is also the island council’s cabinet member for regeneration and tourism and, while mindful of the challenges, she is optimistic for the island’s future. ‘I think the heritage parts of the island will have a place in our hearts, they’ll continue while people want them,’ she says. She points to the construction of a film studio near Osborne House, Queen Victoria’s favourite retreat, as potentially transformative and providing some of the answers to the desperate need to keep younger people on the island. ‘You can use the island for every film backdrop you could want apart from mountain scenery,’ she says. ‘This can be the backbone for a whole range of trades and skills.’
Should Victoriana finally fade into the rear-view mirror, creative industries and sustainable tourism will find space to grow, argues Boyd. ‘We have a base for natural sciences and the creative industries here already – arts, cultural venues, music, galleries, live performance. It could be really built upon.’
The island is an extraordinary place where many different times seem to coexist. Now, it seems, those times are overdue for change.
Mark Rowe is the author the Slow Guide to the Isle of Wight, published by Bradt (bradtguides.com)
EXPLORE the Isle of Wight
DON’T MISS
Newtown National Nature Reserve. This medieval town never quite got going. Doomed by plague and marauding Frenchmen, it faded into obscurity. Today, it’s a glorious wildlife haven run by the National Trust and has a town hall without a town.
FORAGING
Alex Richards leads half-day foraging walks and depending on the season, you can bag wild garlic or feast on cob nuts. She teaches you how to forage sustainably, legally and safely – not on National Trust land, nor SSSIs and know your mushrooms! islandwildfood.co.uk
WALKS
Squeezed into its modest dimensions, the island has more than 800 kilometres of rights of way, paths and bridleways to explore, from sweeping downland to high cliffs, quiet bays, woodlands and sunken valleys. The 140-kilometre coastal path circumnavigates most of the island – one of the most impressive parts is from Tennyson Down to the Needles. This 11-kilometre scenic hike along the clifftops overlooks Arm Bay. On the way back, stop for tea at the charming Dimbola Lodge. The island now has two annual walking festivals: one in May and the other in October. Scores of walks are led by knowledgeable local guides.
CYCLING
Bikes travel free on most ferries to the island if you want to bring your own or there are plenty of bike-hire firms near the ferry ports. Visit Isle of Wight has plenty of suggested routes and there’s a free Bicycle Island map available at tourist centres. The child-friendly Red Squirrel Trail is a 20-kilometre loop from Newport to Sundown and Shanklin, with 95 per cent off-road. For the hardcore cyclist, there’s the Island Chalk Ridge Extreme, which takes in some stunning views at Compton Down. Or try the 100-kilometre Round the Island route. Electric bikes are available to hire for those who want to take the edge off the numerous hills.
VENTNOR BOTANIC GARDENS
Tucked into a south-facing cliff are ten hectares of subtropical vegetation flourishing in a unique micro-climate, 5°C warmer than the rest of the island. Originally, the garden and buildings served as the Victorian Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest. Ventnor’s warm airs were considered a curative for tuberculosis; among those who took the air here was the perennially ailing Karl Marx. Many restaurants refer to food miles, but the eatery here applies the metric of ‘food metres’ and uses apples from the arbour or pumpkins from the plantation, while salads are snipped fresh daily.
FOOD & DRINK
The island’s food wealth offers the potential for a new vision for tourism, for it boasts more than 50 local food producers, all either independent or family owned, selling everything from fresh fish, local beef, cheese, tomatoes and garlic to sea salt, cherries, flour, bread, jams, dressings and vinegars. There are also two vineyards, three breweries and a gin and whisky distillery.
BEACHES
Excellent surfing at Compton Bay. Eddie’s Surf Academy teaches everyone from eight-year-olds up in small private groups ([emailprotected]). Hanover Point, at the southern end of the bay, is a good place to go fossil hunting – some 20 species of dinosaur have been found along this stretch of Jurassic Coast. Freshwater Bay to the north of Compton Bay is great for rockpooling. You can also snorkel or paddleboard around the eastern edge of the bay to several sea caves.
FIND OUT MORE
The local tourist board’s website – visitisleofwight.co.uk – is packed with useful information on accommodation, what’s on, where to eat and more things
to explore.
