Walk 56 Shanklin Station to Wroxall, via Donkey Sanctuary

 

My second Donkey walk recently, this time in reverse, starting at Shanklin railway station and following the Red Squirrel cycle path.From outside the station, a flight of steps descends from the left side of the car park, coming out opposite Lower Hyde Holiday Park beside Lidl. 

Cross the road and take the path leading through the caravan park to join the Red Squirrel Trail that follows the old railway line, dating from when the rail track extended from Shanklin to Ventnor.

 

This is a nice, flat paved path, passing en route the Railway Cabin, a little cafe stop with the added extra sighting, if you are lucky, of one of their resident deer.

The track curves round until, looking to the right, you see the main road and the Donkey Sanctuary which is reached by taking a path through a ramblers gate down to the main road, marked A Wroxall Walker.

See Walk 52 for details of visiting the Sanctuary. With the cafe terrace on your right take the path straight through past a picnic area and follow it uphill to the right for about 10 minutes.

Here it will join a lane, by a signpost to Winstone Farm and a house called Maydene.

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Turn left on this lane, which is Redhill Lane, passing Redhill Farm and Baron Court Farm. 

 

 

This comes out just past Appuldurcombe Holiday Park to a junction. 

Turning right will lead up to visit Appuldurcombe House, or a left turn will lead back to the main road through Wroxall. There is a bus stop opposite but turning right for a few minutes will take you into the village with a bus stop at Wroxall Church and the Star Inn if refreshments are required.

Walk Details
Start: Shanklin Railway Station
Finish: Wroxall Church
Distance: 3.6 miles
Time: 2 hours
Bus: No 3 from Ryde or Newport, Traiin from Ryde to Shanklin
Refreshments/WC: Donkey Sanctuary, Star Inn Wroxall

Walk 47 Shanklin to Yaverland and Wildheart Trust - 3 miles

This is a perfect walk in any weather, a flat, gentle stroll along the sea path from Shanklin to Sandown, ending at the Wildheart Trust, formerly the IOW zoo, but now a sanctuary for mostly rescued animals.

I started the walk in Shanklin town centre, joining the cliff path at the end of Clarendon Rd, before descending to join the sea path at Hope Beach.   

Passing the colourful beach huts, the path skirts the fine, sandy beaches of Lake and Sandown Bay, always popular with dog walkers. 

There are several cafes along the way, but my current favourite is Tradewinds, a touch of the tropics on the English coast.

Beyond the pier and seafront hotels we come to Yaverland and Wildheart Trust . It is a small facility but the animal care is exceptional and the visitor experience extraordinary, as you can get so close to the animals and watch them being fed and engaged in enrichment activities that mirror their life in the wild.

In their large, sandy enclosure, half a dozen meerkats guard their territory with their customary stance.

Recently arrived are a family of three Eurasian Lynx, Daenerys and her offspring Tyrion and Nymeria.

Also new to the sanctuary are two servals, Tafkap and Xirius, rescued from the illegal pet trade in France, where they were locked up in a bathroom and bedroom. Despite having broken and deformed bones from their time in captivity, they now trot happily around their large, grassy enclosure. The broadcaster Chris Packham has recently spearheaded a campaign to stop the breeding of servals with domestic cats to produce Savannah Cats. Read here.

But the main attraction is the big cats. Lion feeding demos take place most days and the cats are so comfortable with visitors that they can often be found lounging in front of their cages just an arm's stretch away.

 

This beautiful tiger is one of five rescued a few years ago from a Spanish circus.

Walk Details
Start: Clarendon Road, Shanklin bus stop
Finish: Yaverland
Distance: 3 miles
Time:  60 minutes
Bus: No 2,3,8 from Ryde or Newport
Refreshments/WC:Pubs,cafes in Shanklin/Sandown, public WC in crazy golf at Shanklin and by Sandown Pier, Yaverland and in Wildheart Sanctuary

Walk 46 Luccombe to Sandown - 4 miles

A regular winter walk, so I was surprised I hadn't written it up before. It's an ideal starter for the new year, not too long and fairly flat.

Leaving the bus route at the green known as Big Mead, Priory Rd leads to the steps to Luccombe beach. This end of the beach stays quiet even in high season, free from deckchairs and other enticements.

From here, one can walk along either the beach or Esplanade as far as Yaverland at the foot of Culver Down beyond Sandown to the east. However, the reverse is not true and only at very low tide it possible to head west towards Ventnor, scambling over rocks; really not advisable.

Nothing is more typical of the Isle of Wight than thatched cottages, and there are a fair few thatched pubs, but as far as I know, the Fisherman's Cottage is the only thatched pub on the beach, tucked away at the foot of the natural gorge of Shanklin Chine. According to Historic England, the cottage was built in 1871 by William Colenutt, who created the path through the Chine and set up the first bathing machines on the beach.

Later the pub provided hot seawater baths for Victorian tourists seeking health cures, and the Chine now contains the only surviving example of a Hot Brine Bath, a marble basin dating from c.1845, with wooden handrails, now a Grade II listed building.Generally the pub is only open April to November.

Passing the foot of the Chine, the route follows the Esplanade with its familiar array of beach shops, cafes and pub-restaurants. 

 Note along the way the three ornate Victorian shelters.

 

At the far end of the Esplanade is the South East Beach Cafe with its decking projecting on to the beach, 

Here we come to Shanklin Sailing Club and the beginning of the sea wall walk through Lake to Sandown.

 Plenty of dog walkers were in evidence today.

 Sandown's Esplanade hotels may have seen better days, but a new Premier Inn is being built. The beach, however is a fabulous stretch of soft sand.

At the end of the sea wall we come to the remains of Sandown Pier. A 360 foot pier first opened for the 1879 season, to be extended to 875 feet in 1895. The ballroom at the pavillion end of the pier was at the heart of the resort and paddle steamers called at the new landing stage. In the 1990s, the theatre was replaced with a bowling alley and golf course, and the beach end is still a popular attraction with a cafeteria, shops, kiosks and amusements.

My walk ended with lunch at one of a number of popular seafront eateries, looking out at the view up to the coastguard cottages and monument on Culver Down

Retracing my steps to the beyond the pier, steps lead up to the clifftop path and the WW" defences at Battery Gardens by which I made my way back to Shanklin.

Walk Details
Start: Big Mead, Shanklin
Finish:Lake
Distance: 4.18 miles
Time: 2 hours
Bus: No 3 from Ventnor, Ryde or Newport
Refreshments/WC: South Beach Cafe, various along seafronts

Walk 10 - The Landslip - 3.25 miles

Note. Following the Landslip in 2024, it is no longer possible to walk this route without retuning to the road to detour around the closed paths.

Today I took one of my favourite walks, the Landslip walk from Shanklin to Ventnor. Of course you can take it in either direction, but Shanklin-Ventnor is definitely easier on the legs as it is mostly downhill.
Usually the walk starts at Shanklin Old Village, by taking Chine Hollow to the left of the Crab Inn and following it to join Luccombe Road.

Today I started at Big Mead, just south of the village, and followed Priory Road to join Luccombe Road, heading west past the two new blocks of apartments.

Along Luccombe Rd, these sheep kindly posed for a foreground to my view.

From the top of the hill the view extends over Sandown Bay to the chalk cliffs of Culver Down.

Throughout my walk I came across patches of willowherb or Chamerion angustifolium, so it must be weed of the month.

The cause of the slippage here is the soft Gault clay, known locally as Blue Slipper, which lies beneath the harder Upper Greensand rock. The current landscape dates from the major landslips in 1810 and 1818 and another in 1995. The picturesque, wooded landscape appealed greatly to the Romantic Victorians, who built a series of staircases and walls to turn the area into a popular woodland walk among the natural features such as the Chink, the Devil's Chimney and the Wishing Seat.

It's not unusual around here to come across stalls selling pot of preserves with an honesty box for payment. Having left home with just my bus fare, I couldn't be tempted this time.

No chance of making a call from here, but it did catch my eye.

All along the path were carpets of another spring visitor, Allium ursinum, also known as Ramsons or wild garlic.

At the end of Luccombe Road we enter the Landslip proper, about 3km of ancient mixed woodland. Uprooted by storms and land movement, huge oak, ash and beech trees lie in deep chines and hollows and ivy climbs the trunks and boughs.

Here, as in most quiet woodland areas on the island, you may catch a glimpse of a red squirrel, but I have never been quick enough with my camera to capture one, so until I do I've borrowed one of Peter Trimming's beautiful images.

Copyright Peter Trimming and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Arriving at Dunnose Cottage, I was delighted to find that the cottage has just reopened as a tea-room. (Edit 2022: The tea room has closed again.)This place was a favourite stopping point on this walk when I did it with my family as a child, when we would look at the rabbits in the grounds and, if I recall correctly, a donkey.

In those days it was a traditional cottage garden; now it is more landscaped with a pool and statuary, but it's still gorgeous. But since I had no money on me, I had to forego my cream tea.

A little further along we come to the Wishing Seat, a mossy crop of stone where, as always I stopped to make a wish. However, I must say it doesn't have a great record of success in my case!

This postcard, from a collection by Jarrolds, c. 1910, shows it was originally a larger stone. Here are the notes from the book: "
The Landslip which lies between Shanklin and Ventnor is a favourite resort to the inhabitants and visitors of both places. The catastrophe that wrought this magic transformation has resulted in producing scenery of entrancing beauty. The efforts of Nature to cover and hide the deformities of riven rocks and yawning chasms have produced trees of fantastic shape and remarkable diversity. The broken rocks afford sustenance for many plants, the chloritic marl liberated making the ground wonderfully fertile. This stone seat forms a natural throne on which many parties have found a trysting-place. As it stands in the principal pathway it is a well-known resting-place."

Jarrold's Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight, from Project Gutenberg

If I am not mistaken, I chose the same old oak to photograph as Jarrold did in 1910!

The Old Oak from Jarrolds at Project Gutenberg

Believe it or not, my photo is straight, it's the seat and pole that are wonky, probably because of land movement since they were placed.

As we near the end of the Landslip the sea appears between the trees.

At this point we get a good look at the Landslip itself as the path edges a steep drop below.

We emerge above Monk's Bay.

Monk's Bay Cottage, now a holiday letting, always has a colourful display in its garden.

The coastal path leads down to Horseshoe Bay and from here you can see how it got its name.

From this point, one can either follow the sea wall back into Ventnor, or take the steps uphill to return to town via Bonchurch, which is what I did today. The echium that I photographed in my previous post is now in flower.

The path winds uphill past the stream; I always peep over the fence for a view of this little archway.

I never an excuse to take another photo of the Old Church at Bonchurch, so I had to pop in and catch a few final bluebells.

The whole of the Landslip and Bonchurch is edged with mossy dry stone walls, a thing of beauty in their own right.

This one was covered with lichen and ivy leaved toadflax or Cymbalaria muralis, a plant native to southern Europe

Wandering into the Bonchurch Parish Church, I spotted this interesting tombstone among a carpet of wild garlic. I will see if I can find out anything about it.

This is the resting place of Algernon Swinburne, the poet, who lived at nearby East Dene.

Passing the Bonchurch Pond, I noticed how still the water was and thought I'd have a go at shooting reflection in the water.

I passed the staircase leading to The Pitts and Upper Bonchurch.

Today I followed Trinity Road to enter Ventnor, snapping Holy Trinity Church as I passed.

Ventnor always offers a surprise and today the Convolvulus cneorum  bushes along the car park were looking fab!

Alternatively, follow Stokeys Solar System Walk along to reach Ventor by the seafront and take an interplanetary stroll as you go!
Walk Details

Distance 3.25 miles

Start: Shanklin Old Village, Priory Rd

Finish: Central Car Park, Ventnor

Time: 2 hours

Bus: No. 3 Ventnor to Shanklin

Refreshments and WC:  A diversion up to the road leads to the Smugglers Haven Café, open approx April to Sept, public WC .