Useful Notes / Isle of Wight

Q: What's brown, steaming, and comes out of Cowes?

A: The Isle of Wight Ferry.

—Trad.

The Isle of Wight is an island off the South Coast of England, approximately diamond shaped in form and only be accessed by ferry (mostly, and see below about that). It measures 25 miles (40km) by 13 miles (20km) and has a population of 140,000, roughly the same as a city such as Oxford ^note  this makes it the second-most populous of the islands off England, the most populous being Portsea which is separated from the mainland by a narrow creek and consists for the most part of the city of Portsmouth, from where ferries to the Isle of Wight can be taken.

Once its own kingdom for short time, the Island (as it is known by its inhabitants, always with the capital 'I') is very much a part of England (and by extension the United Kingdom), of which it is a county — although historically it was part of Hampshire, with which it still shares a police force and a fire service. Its major industry is tourism and has been known as a holiday destination since the Victorian Era (Queen Victoria herself had a holiday home there called Osborne House which is now a tourist attraction). It's also known for its fossils, many which have been found on West Wight (as the western side of the Island is known).

An old joke consists of a series of Incredibly Lame Puns on Isle of Wight place names, much beloved of older postcards. There are seven in total, known as the Seven Wonders of the Isle of Wight...

Cowes you cannot milk, Freshwater you cannot drink, a Lake you can walk through without getting your feet wet, Needles you cannot thread, Newport you cannot bottle, a Newtown that is old, and Ryde, where you walk.

The Seven Wonders:

• Cowes: The town at the northernmost end of the Island is a town of two parts, divided by the River Medina and connected by a chain ferry.
  • The larger of the two is the bit on the western side. Simply called Cowes, it's well-known internationally for yachting, in particular Cowes Week in June every year. Both towns were the location of a Moment of Awesome in 1942 by the Cowes-built ORP Blyskawica, which defended the town from bombing while under refit.
  • East Cowes is on the eastern side of the river. Despite not much being there, it has a few claims to fame — it was where the first hovercraft was built and tested (in a hangar which is still there), and it is the location of the Red Funnel ferry terminal.
• Freshwater: A major village in West Wight, near to Yarmouth. Robert Hooke, the scientist who discovered cells and invented the microscope, called this picturesque cove-side village home. A statue of Jimi Hendrix can be found in the grounds of Dimbola Lodge; Hendrix played at the legendary 1970 Isle of Wight Festival which was held on nearby Afton Down.
• Lake: A large village situated between its larger resort town neighbours, Sandown and Shanklin — the three are to all intents and purposes a continuous urban area although Lake seems to have retained a separate sense of identity. It's mostly residential, but has plenty of small shops and a large park, plus access to a more quiet part of Sandown Bay, where there are less tourists but still plenty of sand.
• The Needles: A set of chalk stacks off the western tip of the Island. One of them actually used to look like a needle, hence the name, but it collapsed in a storm. The remaining stacks look more like jagged white teeth, with a lighthouse on the end. The whole area — often called Alum Bay which is in fact the name of the bay just to the north of the Needles — is a popular tourist attraction which also has a fort, an old rocket testing site, a chair-lift down to the beach and boat trips that run out from the beach to enable tourists to get close to the lighthouse. The Needles themselves are actually much smaller than you'd expect. Alum Bay is famous for its multicoloured sand cliffs overlooking the beach. It used to be possible for tourists to collect samples of sand. This is now forbidden for safety reasons, although samples can still be bought at the local tourist shop. Glass ornaments containing different-coloured layers of the sand have long been popular souvenirs.
• Newport: The "capital" of the Island, home to Isle of Wight Council and most of the major shopping chains. And traffic. Of particular infamy in terms of the latter is a roundabout called Coppins Bridge which, in addition to being more or less the epicentre of the Island's road network is also at one end of a road simply known as The Dual Carriageway (because it's the Island's only dual carriageway — all half-a-mile of it).
• Newtown: Once a rival to Newport, but declined in medieval times due to its susceptibility in terms of being raided by the French, Newport being easier to defend as it's further inland. Now owned by the National Trust, Newtown today is little more than a hamlet which, thanks to its large natural harbour, is popular with birdwatcher and anglers.
• Ryde: The other major Island town. Home of Ryde Pier, the oldest surviving pier in the world (it opened in 1814) and the fourth-longest in Britain, as well as being one of very few piers that has regular trains running down it. Ryde is the southern terminus of Britain's last remaining hovercraft service (see below) which runs from Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. It is also where Anthony Minghella was born.

Other notable places on the Island:

• Bembridge: The village at the eaternmost end of the Island. Also has boats (and houseboats), the largest of the two current airports on the Island, a lifeboat station and a hovercraft factory. The Britten-Norman Islander, a very popular plane that has sold well for the best part of half a century, is manufactured here.
• Blackgang Chine ^note Roughly translated, "Smuggler's Ravine", although the actual ravine has eroded away: A former smuggling spot near the southern tip of the island, now home to Britain's oldest theme park (allegedly). According to The Other Wiki, the park was one of Rupert Grint's favourite childhood holiday attractions.
• Bonchurch: A small village to the east of Ventnor (see below) which has largely been incorporated into the resort town over the years. Home to picturesque tea gardens and steep cliffs, it's worth noting that Bonchurch and Ventnor's position on the edge of the Island with the gigantic St. Boniface Down (the summit of which is the highest point on the Island) looming down on them has led to some interesting (and rather scary) geological features forming in the area; roads regularly have to be closed for repair work owing to erosion and faults in the rock, and a large Graben separates the upper and lower areas of Ventnor, the houses on the upper section being considerably more vulnerable than those below.
• Carisbrooke Castle: A medieval castle not far from Newport which is reckoned to have been built on the site of a Roman fort. Charles I was imprisoned there for 14 months prior to his trial and execution; a few centuries later, Princess Beatrice (Queen Victoria's youngest child) lived there for many years.
• Fishbourne: A small village on the north-east of the Island, best known as being the terminus of the Wightlink ferry route from Portsmouth.
• Godshill: A village near the middle of the Island. A magnet for tourists, it has a model village, a famous church, lots of free parking and plenty of cafes which open in the summer.
• Osborne House: Queen Victoria's favourite residence, located just south of East Cowes. Now open to the public, it was used as a filming location for Mrs Brown and Victoria & Abdul.
• Parkhurst Prison: One of two formerly high-security prisons on the Island (it has been officially merged with the other one, Albany, to form "HMP Isle of Wight"); previous inmates have included the Krays and the Yorkshire Ripper.
• Sandown: North of Shanklin and Lake. A seaside resort, more developed and touristy than Shanklin. It has a Dinosaur Museum and an open-top bus service.
• Shanklin: A seaside resort on the east coast of the Island, the southernmost bit of the Sandown-Lake-Shanklin conurbation. Known for the Old Village (the southern part of the town that's directly above the cliff) and Shanklin Chine (a picturesque wooded ravine), and for being at one end of the PLUTO pipeline that was used after D-Day.
• Ventnor: Another resort, this time on the south of the Island. Built on the side of St. Boniface Down, the highest hill on the Island. Has been somewhat run-down since the railway station shut in the late 1960s, but is now slowly being regenerated by cafes and antique shops. Known for the Radar Station on the Down, which was attacked during the Battle of Britain. Famous visitors have included Edward Elgar, Karl Marx and Winston Churchill. The resort was at one point in the 19th century so famous that when a new resort town was opened on the Jersey shore in 1889 immediately south of Atlantic City, they named it Ventnor City.
• Yarmouth: The biggest town on the western part of the Island (although in terms of population it is actually smaller than nearby Freshwater, which is a village). Is known as the home of one end of the Yarmouth-Lymington ferry, yachting, a fort and a few shops. Of minor significance to Americans: the "Winthrop Fleet" that brought the Puritan founders of Boston from England in 1630 sailed out of Yarmouth. As a result, it lent its name to a few much larger settlements in the New World.
• Yaverland: Slightly further North than Sandown, it's a small place. Known for Extreme Sports. Also the Isle of Wight Zoo, built in an old fort, is near here.

Transport

• Ferries & Hovercraft
  • The only real way to get to the Isle of Wight is by ferry. Fares are expensive in terms of distance (making the Solent the most expensive piece of water in the world) and are divided up between three routes and three operators:
    • Wightlink: Formerly the British Rail ferries, now owned by an Australian bank. Responsible for the Portsmouth-Fishbourne and Lymington-Yarmouth car ferries, and the Fastcat passenger catamaran from Portsmouth to Ryde Pier Head.
    • Red Funnel: Owned by another bank, Red Funnel operates a car ferry from Southampton to East Cowes and a catamaran from Southampton to Cowes (the other side of the Medina to the car ferry).
    • Hovertravel: The last surviving regular hovercraft service in the world runs from from Southsea Beach to Ryde Seafront. It takes approximately ten minutes to get between the two and is usually the first service to be cancelled in rough weather.
• Trains & Buses
  • The Island Line dates back to the 1860s and has been electrified since the 1960s. It runs from Ryde Pier Head (yes, trains on the Pier) down the eastern side of the Island to Shanklin. It used to go down to Ventnor (which has a rather unique station built halfway up the side of St. Boniface Down), but that was closed in 1966. Prior to refurbishments in 2021, the Island Line's rolling stock was some of the oldest in the country — former London Underground trains dating back to 1938^note  they were just over fifty years old before they crossed the Solent between 1989-92 , due to clearance problems on the tunnel in Ryde. When the refurbishments are done, the Island Line will have updated its rolling stock ... to former London Underground trains dating back to 1980.
  • There is also the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, running from Smallbrook Junction to Wootton Bridge. The rolling stock includes W24 Calbourne, the last surviving example of the LSWR O2 Class; it was built in 1891 and transferred to the Island in the 1920s. Truly, there is nothing new about the Island only ever getting second-hand trains.
  • Southern Vectis is the only bus company that operates on the Island (as it has been since the 1970s). Despite the high fares, Southern Vectis actually has a more modern fleet than most of the country, and is well-regarded in the industry for its publicity, and for running buses even on Christmas Day.
• There's a small airport at Bembridge where the Islander aircraft is made by Britten-Norman. A few air services have been tried but nothing came of it.
• And the roads? Apart from a few main roads, and 1/2 mile of dual carriageway in Newport, it's good to remember that Island Roads are Different^note mostly because they are narrow and are full of holes, although a PFI is making a good effect at fixing the problems.

Media:

As well as receiving the regional BBC South and ITV Meridian television and national and regional radio stations, the Island has its own local newspapers and radio, which differ in some ways from the Mainland:

• The major local newspaper is the Isle of Wight County Press, published every Friday since 1884 and read by an estimated 90% of the Island's adult population, after seeing off all competitors. Formally a broadsheet, it moved to a compact format in 2008. Other more local newspapers are produced.
• The local radio station is unsurprisingly called Isle of Wight Radio. Founded in 1990 as a locally-owned station, it bounced around several corporate owners^note  Including GWR, which later became Global Radio until it was brought out by local interests in 2009. Quite a successful station, it has won many industry awards and it plays a variety of popular music, old and new.

Not to be confused with Our Wights Are Different.

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The Isle of Wight has appeared in:

• The Isle of Wight Festival. The Original Festivals were in 1968-1970. The 1970 one holds the record for having the largest-ever attendance of any music festival — an estimated 600,000 people (over four times the population of the entire Island!) were there, compared to the estimated 400,000 who were at Woodstock the year before. The revived Festival has been based outside Newport since 2002.
  • The revived festival is so popular that for a time, if you googled "Isle of Wight", the festival's official website came up before the island's website.
• The island gave its name to a county in Virginia. Interestingly, as of August 2022, a Google search for "Isle of Wight" returns the Virginia county's website before that of the English island's council. However, the tourism website for the island comes up before both. (The festival's website is now farther down the page.)
• As stated above, Osborne House was used as a filming location for Mrs Brown and Victoria & Abdul.
• In Nebulous, the Island gets destroyed after an attempt to move it a bit to the left.
• It's home to most of Level 42.
• Same for most of Wet Leg
• The British military evacuated the Royals here during the events of Dies the Fire, and used it as a base to recolonize an England reduced to a scattering of cannibal savages. ^note  So there are no Wights on the Isle of Wight.

..

• The Island was name-checked by The Beatles in "When I'm Sixty-Four" ^note  although whether or not "Ticket to Ride" actually refers to Ryde — Paul McCartney had a cousin who lived on the Island and used to get a ferry ticket to Ryde in order to visit him — is disputed; Paul said that that was where he got the idea for the title, John said that Paul was wrong about this, and George and Ringo kept out of it.
  Every summer we can rent a cottage on the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear...
• Warhammer Fantasy has a place called the Isle of Wights not far from the rain-soaked island of Albion, which is, surprisingly enough, full of wights.