Thursday, March 3rd 2022. Our final day on holiday in the New Forest, and so we left the New Forest. In fact, we were leaving the mainland and getting a ferry across to the Isle of Wight. The rain of the past few days seemed to have dissipated, and the forecast was overcast but dry. An early breakfast was necessary as we had to be at the port between 30 and 60 minutes prior to our 1000 departure.
The ferry out
Lymington was only about a 15 minute drive from Brockenhurst, and reaching the port doesn’t involve going through the town or any confusing one way systems etc. We got there at 0905, and were only the second vehicle in the queue. Excitement levels were high - getting a boat feels like proper holiday. Also I’d never been on a car ferry before, at least not as a car passenger.
There was a boat already at the port, but it turned out not to be ours. A couple of trains came and went from the single platform station adjacent to the car park, and a handful more vehicles turned up. Some foot passengers too, but it looked like this was going to be a pretty empty service.
Our vessel arrived from across the Solent at 0925, but still we waited, and waited. Excitement gave way to boredom, as the wait carried on. Various hi-viz folk were looking busy, and occasionally a driver would get out, stroll up and have an inaudible conversation with one of them, but nothing shifted until about 0950. Mercifully there were so few vehicles and people that boarding was quick enough that we left exactly on time. We were up on the outdoor sun deck in time for this, and spent the entire 35 minute or so journey there.
The first part of the voyage is through a tightly marked channel. I thought we were going to hit a catamaran.
Half way across, we greeted another Wightlink service, the one that would be the 1045 crossing.
It was a bit cold and breezy, but still dry, and loads of bloody fun. This felt even more amazing than our “get a train and drink inside a pub” adventure from the previous day. As we closed in on Yarmouth I saw a lighthouse that was shining its light, and queried why such a thing was necessary.
Come 1030, we were back in the car waiting for the ramp to drop so we could drive off.
Literally the second we were off the boat and on the streets of Yarmouth, it started raining. Bloody typical. With our return not until 5pm, the sudden and unexpected prospect of finding a way to kill 5 hours in bad weather was unwelcome.
Fort Victoria Country Park
So close to Yarmouth is Fort Victoria Country Park that we’d eyed its buildings from the ferry, and were in the car park by 1040 - the boat’s scheduled arrival time. First impressions were not great.
The rain was really bad now. Originally we’d hoped to do some decent amount of walking on the many paths around here (in fact, all over the Isle of Wight there are masses of well signposted footpaths). We soon gave up on a walk after venturing about 100ft into the woods before conditions underfoot, let alone the rain, made us give up.
Poking out from a gap in the buildings is an old cannon. This really was a fort, after all, right up until the 1960s I think. I made no real effort to commit much to memory since I was struggling to care.
The buildings surrounding the car park are full of attractions. This hut is the “Imaginarium”.
It was shut. The cafe was shut. The planetarium was shut. In fact everything was shut except for the souvenir shop, and the reptilarium/terrapin sanctuary.
The souvenir shop was WEIRD AS FUCK. It had a few different themed rooms, like pirate stuff in one place, fridge magnets in another, etc. Not a single thing interested us except perhaps the giant motorised phoenix which moved and made a noise when we stood near it.
Reptiles it is, then. How could we resist?
To be honest, this was quite good. I mean, it was animals, and we like animals. There was no-one else around, unsurprisingly - plenty of dog walkers but no-one else visiting. Tell you what though, £6 per person is a bit steep. Anyway, here’s some of what we saw inside.
About 30% of the cases, perhaps more, didn’t seem to have any animals in them. There were signs saying what we should expect to see, and many are meant to be good at sleeping or camouflage so perhaps they were there? But we didn’t get to see them, making the £6 feel even more steep. But hey, it kept us out of the rain for a bit.
Yes. Rain. Having exhausted the indoor delights of the Fort Victoria Country Park, we had to make up a new itinerary for the day and that meant driving through the much worse rain than before.
The Needles
The Needles, recent location of England’s fastest recorded wind gust (122mph during Storm Eunice!), was another 10 minutes or so away. I’ve been before, about 10 years ago, and I recall an extremely tacky park of attractions - though I don’t remember if I saw the Needles themselves. We’d been able to glimpse them from the ferry, here was our chance to get a closer up view.
Oh. Maybe not. By this time, not only was it still raining but visibility was down to two-thirds of fuck all. Perhaps that’s why they need a lighthouse?
We obviously weren’t going to do the walk down to get really close, so staring into fog from the platform at the end of the park would have to do.
About the park itself…
We weren’t surprised to find some things shut - we were, after all, visiting deliberately out of season and on a weekday - but to find EVERYTHING shut except for a cafe and a souvenir shop felt a bit, well, actually it was funny as fuck. The place was desolate. There was wind damage to some of the attractions like mini go kart course and stuff. The chairlift down to the beach couldn’t have been more impressively bleak.
I bloody ♥️ the Needles, me. Here, here’s the proof.
The souvenir shop didn’t make us feel like buying anything, even the out of date fudge or local booze. But we were a bit hungry, so ventured into the cafe. It was, um, pretty ropey. Felt like a staff canteen in a large out of town workplace which, in fact, it was - the people buying food directly in front of us were uniformed Needles folk on first name terms with the guy handing out pastry goods.
Being licensed, I had thought perhaps I could have an Isle of Wight beer with lunch. My hopes were dashed, as the only booze on offer was cans of John Smith’s. No sale. The pasty I had was pretty grim, and the Eccles cake even worse. Still, again, it killed some time. Google helped us figure out somewhere else to visit, and along the south coast we headed.
Freshwater Bay
Visibility by now had dropped from two-thirds of fuck all to about one-third. Terrible. I’m sure there was some lovely scenery, but at points we honestly couldn’t see further than about 10 yards. Dreadful.
Freshwater Bay was chosen because, err, nope, can’t remember. Probably it just seemed to be the next coastal town along. It didn’t take us long to get there, past closed shops and closed museums and closed cafes. We parked at the car park opposite the beach and stepped out into the rain and wind to take a look at the sea.
It’s a shingle beach, not sand. It was loud and rough, courtesy of the weather. There’s a hotel on one end of the beach, The Albion, with an associated tavern on the ground floor. Nothing was open, in fact we thought it might be derelict but the pile of new, wrapped mattresses behind one window made us think perhaps it’s just closed for the season/refurbishment. Later, we looked online and it seems they are re-opening on May 20th. Shame it wasn’t open, since it looked such an inviting place to have a beer.
We walked around in front of the hotel, and then back. Behind the beach there’s a shelter with an information board and, oh, holy shit - this place actually has some incredibly interesting history. Loads of pioneering people used to come here in the 1800s, they formed a bit of a “set” called the Freshwater Circle. I’m talking, like, people as famous as Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, Charles Darwin. Look.
But, for us, on a shitty bleak day in March 2022 it was laughably awful. A Rock Pippit hopped up close to us, which was somewhat cheering, but it wasn’t enough. Sitting back in the car we thought perhaps of going to look for dinosaur footprints at the next bay along the coast.
Driving rain
A hundred or so yards on from Freshwater Bay’s car park were some roadworks, requiring us to wait at a red signal, up a moderately steep hill. The car decided it really didn’t want to cooperate with the necessary hill start, and misbehaved like fuck. It took us several minutes before we could actually get going, which made Helen feel uneasy about stopping again soon in case something was up with the battery. But anyway, visibility was still horrific, and by the time we reached where the dinosaurs once roamed we wouldn’t have chosen to seek them out.
Acting as navigator, I headed us away from the coast inland through Brighstone and other villages towards Newport, the biggest town on the island that I’ve never been to. We thought about stopping at the castle on the southern outskirts, but it was shut. We thought about stopping in town instead, but it looked shit. We thought about stopping at “Little London”, which I had misunderstood on the map, thinking it was a waterway and park and potentially nice bit of town. In actuality, it was a big shopping centre just off the nearest thing to a motorway we’d seen.
We drove past the Island Brewery, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t have a taproom. Running out of options as we neared Yarmouth with way too much time left in the day, I spotted a National Trust nature reserve on the map. Saved!
Newtown
A National Trust car park with a map of the area, and the sun was threatening to come out. The rain had stopped, and it was no longer windy. Finally things were looking up! Though following the sign to the woodland walk was yet another futile attempt at taking a walk, being way too muddy yet again.
Sod it though. It was dry, we had time to kill, it was quiet. Let’s just walk around the roads… and lo and behold, we found an actual woodland walk in mud that wasn’t so bad as to put us off. Hurrah! Also, crucially, we were promised red squirrels around here. The IoW has reds, not greys, and we were both desperate to see one.
By now, we could even say the weather was moderately pleasant. Certainly in comparison to all that we’d experienced before. Some geese honked their appreciation.
Back in the woodland, the path was a loop, with more access to the estuary at another corner. Creeping through the forest, we still saw no squirrels. Damn it. They are common enough that we had seen THREE road signs warning us about squirrels on our journey, yet weren’t lucky enough to see those animals.
As we left Newtown, we made one last emergency stop right next to a bridge over some other water - a godwit and a little egret were there, putting on a bit of a show for us. No pics, sadly.
About those road signs
Yarmouth
Lastly, we got back to Yarmouth. It was about 2.30pm, meaning we had 90 minutes or so before we could check in for the ferry back. Neither of us had much hope for Yarmouth being nice, and we were both delighted to be proven wrong. It’s a small little town, but seems to be really quite a decent place. And with 6 pubs, in peacetime it would make a good crawl!
We parked outside one pub, and immediately went to our third pier in three days. There’s a cafe at the land end, and a small (closed) kiosk showing pier history at the far end. The planks have names of people that have contributed to it’s upkeep and general existence. The view back to land is of The George hotel and pub.
As well as all the pubs, there’s a posh deli and a decent little supermarket, some other cafes, etc. An old historic town hall, and a lovely terrace overlooking the ferry. Unfortunately we didn’t quite have the time to really do anything except buy some beer for the evening from the supermarket. We resolved to revisit though. I want to do that pub crawl, damn it.
The ferry back
We checked in for the return ferry more than an hour in advance, and were already 5th or so in the queue. By the time we came to drive onboard there were tons of vehicles - seems leaving the Isle of Wight is a lot more popular than travelling to it.
Driving on, we parked in our designated spot and were firmly instructed to STAY IN THE CAR. Thought this was a bit weird, but the reason became clear - we weren’t on the lower deck, but had driven onto a mezzanine. The whole floor lifted up, and we were actually the third deck up! I found this incredibly fun. Helen, less so.
Once we were allowed out, the nearest door took us directly to the bar. Ooh, there’s a bar. But there was already a long queue and with the boat being much busier than the morning’s service, we pegged it straight back out to the sun deck. By now, the name was no longer laughable. There was sun! Contrary to most of our day, we actually had some really bloody lovely views to enjoy.
After 5 minutes or so I decided y’know what, I really would like to have a beer on a boat. It’s been a while. And Helen wanted a coffee too, so inside we went. There was literally no queue so we got served immediately. Back out we went. Woohoo, boat beer!
This was proving to be a glorious end to what had in truth been a mostly great day. The weather and bleakness had all been far funnier than upsetting.
For the last 10 minutes of the ride, a load of seagulls loitered in our slipstream. Most of them were feeding, but one just seemed to be enjoying flying in circles over our heads.
Epilogue
The evening, our last of the holiday, went like this: drove back from Lymington to Brockenhurst. Did a small bit of packing. Cooked some food, badly, but drank well: we went to the cottage bar for one last drink. A 57% gin for me, prosecco for Helen. Ate the badly cooked food, and watched some TV.
On Friday morning we had our breakfast, yet another fry up, and checked out. The drive home was quick and easy, on mostly empty roads, punctuated by a stop at St Catherine’s Hill - same place as on the way down - only to be disappointed that there are no loos there. Home just after 11am, one last piece of his 5 day long Christmas present had arrived: Helen, wonderful as she is, had only bloody bought me a bottle of the gin I’d enjoyed most out of the 7 I’d tried. I have, in fact, had a glass of it on the go as I’ve typed all this up. The whole holiday had been tons of fun, relaxing, and a step back towards comparative normalcy. I hope the holiday I bought her, coming up in May, is as good…!