To recap, I’ve been secretly listening to Google directions in my in-ear headphones while my Dad’s been directing from the wisdom of the ancient OS map, opened out like a broadsheet on the back seat.
I had to give in today to an enormous (and unnecessary) diversion because the signposts and the old paper map both suggested a route that was neither the quickest nor easiest. Google knew better but to keep the peace I had to ignore her. I ended up gritting my teeth as we chicaned around the steep, 45-degree hairpin bends of Ventnor.
“It’s okay!” I cheered unconvincingly from the driver’s seat, “I’ve got my Nigel Mansell shoes on today!”
My Dad laughed at the reference anyway. Google whispered of sweet left turns in my ear. I said nothing.
Ventnor is hilly (noted), and also beautiful. We arrived to the sight of a glistening green ocean tipped with white horses. A line of deep brown beach was being kissed by waves behind a smart esplanade of parked cars and railings. The road descended past a winter gardens - ferns and palms, and then ran along between sunlit hotels and the sea. We parked.
Ventnor’s on the South of the Island - facing sort of South East I suppose, towards Normandy. With its southerly latitude and its direction then, it claims to be the sunniest place in Britain, a declaration that might well be true! Today, a day in October, we sat on the beach while the sun played peepo with the clouds. It was lovely. And it was warm, mostly.
It’s not sand though. It’s tiny stones like gravel. Our camping chairs dug into the beach with a soft crunch. Conversations followed about which way the tide was flowing, where the pier used to be, how many waves had to crash in before a big one seeped towards us, and who had been responsible for packing the sweeteners for the flask of tea.
I found a feather and stuck it into the pebbles, half way between us and the edge of the ocean. The sea roared towards it. Once again I found myself captivated by the rhythm: crash, seep, rattle, roll. The white water coursed over the stones towards my feet. I love a beach day.
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Our next stop was up the hill: the Ventnor Botanic Gardens. Its temperate climate made Ventnor very popular in Victorian times. Like much of the Island, there was a lot of influence from the Royal family and regal styles, that still make it fashionable today. The architecture is a classic example of this. Another was the very Victorian founding, and enjoying, of a nice public gardens.
I described VBG as ‘uplifting’. There’s something about the splash of colours, the neatness and the variety. We saw sunflowers and hotlips, hydrangeas, red hot pokers, penstemons, camellias, bursts of life still sparkling in autumn. There were even bumblebees foraging in the flowers of one rainbow coloured plant.
Also uplifting is the sight of the gigantic trees and foliage! They grow palms and banana trees in Ventnor! There was an archway of intertwining figs and giant fern fronds from a plant that would have swallowed my garden back home! Even the tropical hothouse had lilies, Victoria Lily pads we thought, that were the size of bathtubs.
It was all so delightful! As the evening sun poked through the clouds, I found myself wandering through archways of green and orange and yellow: the colours of autumn.
I liked Ventnor. It had a genteel elegance, an old-fashioned, unhurried sweetness about it. Squirreled away there on the far side of this island, it must have retained that niceness for a hundred and fifty years! It was a winsome town of life and colour, untouched by the pace of modernity and progress. In some ways the epitome of much of this island, cut off from the mainland by the steep hills of Boniface Down on one side and the great green sparkling ocean on the other.
I’d come back to that.
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