Walking the Isle of Wight's Chalk Downs
Thanks to Red Funnel for providing me with free ferries and to Grange Farm for providing two nights of free accommodation. I almost stole your alpacas.
I grew up on the southern edge of the New Forest just a ten minute walk from the clifftops at Barton. Sat on the horizon was the Isle of Wight, a constant figure only obscured by occasional Channel fog. It was a fairly easy jaunt to the island when I was a child; we'd pedal over to Lymington and roll onto the car ferry to Yarmouth. The voyage was always exciting, like travelling to a mythical land. When the ferry made landfall, we'd pedal off along the cycle path to Freshwater for ice creams before repeating the journey in reverse.
As an adult, the only times I went to the island were on my boat, Berwick Maid, but only really to anchor.
As a result, when Red Funnel got in touch to see if I fancied a trip to the Isle of Wight, I jumped at the chance. Whilst I now live in Devon – an incredible outdoor adventure destination in its own right – there's something about the Isle of Wight that holds a little magic; there's something Blytonesque about it.
Accessibility
If you want to reach the island, it doesn't take very long to figure it out. It lies just a mile or two off Hampshire's south coast, right in the middle, south of Southampton.
It's absurdly easy to reach whether you're taking a car, a bike, or arriving on foot. You can catch a WightLink ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth, a Red Funnel or RedJet ferry from Southampton to Cowes, a WightLink ferry from Portsmouth to the north east of the island or, if you're in the mood for a rather unusual method of travel, you can also catch a hovercraft from Southsea to Ryde.
Thanks to Red Funnel, I caught the Red Jet from Southampton – a first for me. The Red Jets are catamarans and this wasn't the first time I'd come across them. When I first started sailing in Southampton Water and the Solent, the Red Jets were the main obstacles to watch out for. When you first spot one, it looks miles away – it probably is – but by the time you've blinked, it's about 500 m away. They're pretty nimble thanks to their waterjet propulsion and can seemingly turn on the spot. Still, I was happier to be finally on one than dodging them on a yacht; they're so spritely, you feel bad for getting in the way of their exuberance as a sailor, even though it's your right.
Train – Bus – Ferry
You can drive to the Isle of Wight via a car ferry but I decided to leave the car at home and see what public transport had to offer. We hopped on the train at Exeter St Davids and had a breezy two-hour journey to Southampton Central. From there, we walked the 10ish minute walk to Town Quay where the ferry terminal is. If you don't want to walk, you can take a bus including the QuayConnect bus which is a free shuttle between the station and Town Quay if you have a Red Funnel/Red Jet ticket. We caught this on the return journey, as there's usually one lurking outside when the Red Jet turns up.
The journey from Exeter to the ferry terminal in Southampton was seamless. Before I knew it, we were sat on the Red Jet zooming across the water impossibly fast to the Isle of Wight. They say the journey takes 30 minutes but I swear to god it felt like 10. It was the most efficient boat I've ever been on.
While you might feel dubious about linking public transport together and worrying about delays and missed connections, you don't need to book in advance on the Red Jet and there are sailings every 30-60 minutes. I imagine it's fairly similar with the other providers – although you can book in advance on all of them.
Camping
Since we were only going for a couple of days, we were kindly put up by Grange Farm in one of their camping pods. We caught two buses, one from Cowes to Newport and a second from Newport to Brighstone, right on the other side of the island. The bus system is all run by Southern Vectis and all our buses were on time.
From the centre of Brighstone – a charming little village – we walked a mile or so along field footpaths to the clifftop campsite.
And folks. This is no ordinary campsite.
Grange Farm hosts humans, sure, but its main residents are a merry assortment of farm and wild animals. The owners actively keep goats, pigs, alpaca, sheep, chickens, guinea pigs and geese. All of whom you can seek out; some of whom you can give a good scratch behind the ear. As we sat on our picnic bench that evening though, we discovered that the farm is also home to a phenomenal number of wild rabbits and a few couples of red-legged partridges.
You can rock up with a tent, a caravan or book into a camping pod which just avoids having to carry a tent; it's a semi-cylindrical shed really, with light and power.
Isle of Wight downs hike
I came to the Isle of Wight with one intention: walk the chalk downs.
I'm a big fan of chalk downland. Perhaps it's because I grew up in the south, which has great swathes of the stuff, but there's something different about chalk hills. The grass is greener, the cows are friendlier, the views are extravagant – I don't know. But I do know that Brighstone was a damn good place to base yourself if you want to go up the downs, as it were.
We woke up in the morning and made some coffee on my fancy new JetBoil which I bought hurriedly after realising that I was also about to embark on a week's cycle tour and that coffee was mission critical. For breakfast, we wandered back into Brighstone, to the newsagents there which handily doubles as a cafe serving full English breakfasts and, crucially, vegan full English breakfasts.
Sated, we began our walk.
Come rain or shine
The weather was British. As in, the cloud base was touching the ground, it was mizzling, we couldn't see anything, and there was a chill in the air. Given that this was originally going to be a 14-miler, our spirits were also a little on the damp side. After all, I'd come here for the epic coastal views the downs offer. Because they stretch to the Needles and the island is pretty skinny on its western end, you can, in good weather, see three coastlines at once: the south-western and north-western IoW coastlines and the mainland's southern coastline.
We could see nothing.
After a couple of hours, we still couldn't see any views but our eyes did adjust to discover we were surrounding by munching cows and their curious calves.
Just before you descend to Freshwater Bay, our presumptive turnaround point, you walk right through the middle of a golf course. As we descended through it, we finally found ourselves departing the cloud. Below, Freshwater Bay gleamed, somehow, in sunshine.
Finding the cafe closed, we walked further to Freshwater town itself and took shelter in The Freshwater Coffee House, a cool little cafe that I can highly recommend. We ate good food, drank coffee and played a game of Ludo. By the time we left, the cloud was gone and the sun was making up for lost time.
I'd planned to hike back along the coastal path but, having missed out on the views earlier, we figured we'd head back up over the downs, turning the walk into an 18-mile extravaganza, which you can see below.
The downs in sunshine are magnificent. The path cut into the grassy hills shines bright white so the predominant colours are blue sky, green grass and white trail: it's basically Tellytubby Land for adults. Because the downs are undulating, the white trail shines far into the distance, disappearing and reappearing over the next hill.
As we hiked, not only could we see the three coastlines, but across the patchwork fields and the little villages dotted across the west of the island too. We cut a slightly different route back to Brighstone in the last stage, heading through a fantastically beautiful forest on Brook Hill and then across Mottistone Common to the Long Stone – a standing stone.
By the time we got back to the campsite, we'd walked around 18 miles but not a moment of it had felt like a slog. We showered and changed before walking back across the fields to the pub at Brighstone for dinner.
Simplicity
The Isle of Wight is small and most of its communities are as well. Outside of the main towns, there's little choice when it comes to eating out, or even sleeping. This is, in my book, a pretty blissful state of affairs.
There's something incredibly relaxing staying in one of the only accommodation options in the locality, eating in the only restaurant and having breakfast in the only cafe. We claim to want choice all the time but sometimes I don't want to pick and choose, sometimes I just want to experience a place as it is – a rural community as it is.
So the very fact that I could happily dine in Brighstone's Three Bishops and breakfast in the Brighstone Newsagents without any issue at all says a lot. You don't need choice when the only options are good and I had the vegetarian breakfast sans egg – thus vegan. When there are no decisions to be made, perhaps then you can truly be 'away'. Away from the constant overload and overwhelm.
That's how a break on the Isle of Wight made me feel. I was literally and figuratively cut off from the busyness everywhere else.
Of course, if you want choice and vibrancy, you can find plenty of that too. Cowes alone is the sort of place that'll turn you into a jolly sailor whether you want it to or not and shower you in cafe and restaurant options.
Isle of Wight adventures
The Isle of Wight has an enormous network of footpaths sprawling over the entire island. As a result, you can feasibly explore the entire place on foot. If you want a faster way of getting around, you can also hire bikes from plenty of places across the isle, including Brighstone Newsagents come to think of it. Lanes and bridleways make the island wonderful for cycling. You can also take your own bike for free on Red Funnel ferries to East Cowes (rather than the Red Jets – which only take folding bikes).
An island, you can sail, go coasteering, sunbathe, swim and do any other of the myriad coastal activities you could possibly think of. The Isle of Wight has the benefit of not only having a ton of activities on offer, but they're all within relatively easy reach because, did I mention this before? It's a Small Island. But not too small.
On a future IoW adventure, I think I'd hire a bike and stay for a week. With a mixture of cycling and hiking, you could really access every inch. Driving has its benefits of course, but I can't imagine it's a patch on human-powered travel here, there's just so many glorious views and little countryside trails.