SEASIDE TOWNS AND MODEL VILLAGES

Sunshine! At least for the morning anyway. The sky was a light, hazy blue colour and there were scattered clouds and a warm sun. I slipped a headphone into my ear, fired up Google Maps, and we set out for Sandown.

This is a bit of learning I’ve picked up over the years: always have the satnav on, but never in a way that’s obviously going to contradict the map. What I mean by that of course is that my Dad sits in the back with the ordnance survey map spread out, following the route inch-by-inch; I have Google Maps directing me silently while I drive. If ever there’s a conflict, I can easily take the most diplomatic route and no-one’s any the wiser. Trust me: too many of our family holidays were tense moments of rustling maps and sighing noises. This works.

Sandown is a classic seaside town - steep streets of old-fashioned shops selling nicknacks and ornaments (mostly all closed in October) parallel to a long promenade along a wide bay of sand, stones and ocean. Large-windowed hotels look out over the view, and an old-fashioned pier extends its way out into the sea.

Piers were the classic Victorian idea for seaside towns vitalised by the new railways. For an old penny you could step out with your intended, treading the boards and promenading over the sea for your entertainment and pleasure. With time they became more and more elaborate, with whole theatres and funfairs and arcades.

Sandown Pier must have been one such a draw. Today, lit by the bright autumn sun, it looked quite tired. The tall shape of a helter-skelter stood at the end of the caged walk, just beyond a large roofed building marked ‘Dodgems’. No-one was out there; it was deserted.

After Sandown, we used the map/google system to drive to a place called Godshill. There was some debate about what’s actually at Godshill but it turns out that it’s a village that runs entirely on toasted tea cakes. That’s what I concluded anyway - there’s a frightening statistical conglomeration of tea shops at Godshill offering every kind of toasted tea cake, scone, cream tea, beverage, cake and biscuit you can imagine.

It’s a chocolate-box village. Thatched roofs, quaint cottages, trailing flowers round short, wooden doors - it is pretty, and old-fashioned. At the top of the hill, an old church overlooks it all very peacefully, very quietly between the trees. It’s delightful.

For me though, the real star of Godshill is not the tea-cake village itself, but rather the village within the village. What I mean by that of course, is the famous model village of the actual village, inside the village.

I like a model village. Simultaneously there’s a cricket match, a dog show, a wedding outside a church that still contains people singing hymns for some reason, biplanes taking off from the local aerodrome, a 1940s ball, spectators peeking out of a hotel window, netball in the local girl’s school, a baker carrying pastries on his head past gardeners arguing with each other, a football match near some scouts setting up wigwams, a train carrying tigers for the local zoo, and some people checking their tiny watches on the platform. A lot goes on in a model village!

I was also intrigued to see one of the freight carriages on the railway included an iguanadon, a triceratops and an ankylosaur. They were really going for that ‘village of yesteryear’ when they thought that one up!

It is so well done though. Bonsai trees complete the picture, neatly crimped and cut, planted between the 1/10 scale buildings. It was actually one of the most delightful things I’ve seen.

“So wait,” said a man behind us on the path, “If this a model village of this village, shouldn’t there be a model of this model village inside the model village of the village?” His girlfriend chuckled while she worked out what he meant. Then she pointed around the path to a part of the model village they hadn’t seen yet. I knew what was coming.

“There it is!” she said, proudly, “And in it, there’s, look there’s...”

I smiled to myself. I’d already seen that the model model village also contained a tiny model village. So there was indeed a model model village in the model of the model village in the model village of the actual village. He told her his head hurt trying to work that out.

Sunshine really did help it all feel a bit brighter today. It’ll continue to be showery I reckon, and sure, on the way back from Godshill, rain scattered across the windscreen. I think it’ll be okay though. Tomorrow the plan is butterflies and palaces: a bit of a difference to old piers and recursive villages. Hopefully a bit more indoorsy also.