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The Flare Path: Ticket to RydeTouring the turbot
Touring the turbot
In a desperate bid to stave off bankruptcy, troubled British airlineFlybehas taken to leasing spare aircraft to anyone with a chequebook and a gold braid encrusted pilot’s hat. Possessing the requisite accoutrements,Flare PathSky Toursyesterday took temporary possession of an elderlyTwin Ottercalled Tarka. The plan is to use said mustelid in conjunction with browser-based flight simGeoFSto conduct a whistle-stop circumnavigation ofthe largest island in England. Anyone interested in participating in this potentially edifying jaunt should make forSolent Airportsharpish.
Why the Isle of Wight? Three reasons. 1) Ever since my trusty co-pilot, Roman, stumbled upon a century-old guidebook devoted to the place in a box of books donated to theFlare Path reading room, he’s been wanting to pay it a visit. 2) A full fuel tank wasn’t included in the Flybe deal so our maximum range today is somewhat limited. 3) Shameless self-indulgence; one of my earliest holiday memories features me wading Gulliver-like arounda cement facsimile of the Island.
Everyone safely strapped in? Great. Let’s roll…
…over tarmac that hid an elongated explosive secret for sixty-odd years. During remedial work on Solent Airport’s runway in 2006, workmen discovered a subterranean pipe bomb sixty feet in length. Designed to render the coastal airfield, then known as HMS Daedalus, unserviceable in the event of a German invasion, the charge was one of twenty planted under the Portsmouth-adjacent strip.
Before we strike out across the Solent for an arcadia Roman’s guidebook describes thus:
…let’s briefly orbita museumon the airport’s southern fringe that counts amongst its exhibits two* of the most extraordinary vehicles ever to shadow the seabed. Those 56m-long krakens down there are retiredSR.N4hovercraft. Capable of an impressive 83 knots in calm conditions and capacious enough to transport sixty cars and their passengers, the type plied the Channel between 1968 and 2000. Until the arrival of thePomorniks, they were the world’s largest hovercraft.
*Today, only one of the Hovercraft Museum’s SR.N4 remains. To make space for other exhibits, Princess Margaret was scrapped last March
Now we’ve gained a little altitude the Island’s distinctive outline starts to become discernible. I’ve always thought of our destination as being diamond-shaped. My colleague’s Edwardian Lonely Planet guide sees things a little differently:
“The Island is of irregular rhomboidal form, contracting at the two extremities - especially at the west – and has been frequently said to resemble aturbot”
Should my fuel calculations prove inaccurate, the return crossing of the Solent - seven kilometres wide at this point - may involveSailawayor Ship Simulator 2008. The old VSTEP sim and its sequel included recreations of two hardworking local vessels,Red EagleandRed Jet 4, together with a visually pleasing depiction of this slice of the central Solent. All that was missing was simulation of the powerfultidal streamsthat surge through the strait.
The next place of interest on our clockwise Wight flight is a six-sided field close to Wootton Creek. For a few days in late August, 1969, that patch of pasture was no place for field mice, grasshoppers, or toilet anxiety sufferers. The venue forthe second of the Island’s three original music festivals, the lucky 150,000 who gathered there witnessed, amongst other things, a famous Bob Dylan performance.
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Little seen in public since a motorcycle prang three years earlier, Dylan, looking discordantly dapper in a cream suit, performed a 17-number country-tinged set mainly composed of material from Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, John Wesley Harding, and Nashville Skyline. The fact that Roman (born 1972) isn’t visible in any of the crowd footage of the event, suggests his experiments in dendrochronographic displacement will never come to anything.
Ryde, our next port of call, has much to offer the transport enthusiast. The town’s prominent pier has changed relatively little since the writer of our 1916 travel tome described it as “hydra-headed”. Althoughthe tramsthat ran along its length vanished in 1969, ferries from Portsmouth and trains from the Island’s south coast still exchange passengers at its splayed tip.
On their way to and from the mainland, Hovertravel’s cushion craft pass close to a spot where a sizeable British warship foundered in improbable circumstances. No, I’m not referring to the Mary Rose (although the site of her sinking is also currently in view). The ship I’m thinking of is theHMS Royal George, a 100-gunBattle of Cape St. Vincentveteran that went down with heavy loss of life off Southsea in 1782.
“The scenery is not sublime; the smaller shops are still rather primitive; and we are not even sure that the older cottages conform to the very latest requirements of civilisation. But if you care for a place where the only noise is the laughter of children, where the only daylight occupations are yachting, golfing, bathing, and fishing, and the evening occupations as nearly as possible nil; where the only excitement of the day is the arrival of a railway train, or the departure of a diminutive steamer, then Bembridge is not likely to disappoint”.
Although Bembridge saw its last train in 1953, it’s not the transport backwater it appears to be on first inspection.Britten-Norman, the company that gave the world theIslander(a plane not dissimilar in concept and configuration to Tarka), Trislander and Defender is a multinational concern today, but was born and remains headquartered at the small airfield over yonder (Most of the firm’s airfield operations moved to Solent Airport – our starting point – in 2010). The Islander’s maiden flight was from Bembridge in June 1965.
Time to hand out the complimentary bags of “Dino Bones” (Mini Twiglets artfully rebranded with a marker pen yesterday evening). In addition to being just one letter away from a frightening FRPG quest destination, the Isle of Wight is also a palaeontologist’s paradise – one of the richest sources of dinosaur fossils in Europe. Remains of some genera such asCaulkicephalus(a toothy fish-partial pterosaur) andHypsilophodon(an agile dog-sized herbivore) have been found here and nowhere else. The only known fragment ofYaverlandia bitholus, a tiny bird-like biped, was found close to our next waypoint, the village of Yaverland.
Blessed with the Island’s best beach, Sandown has hosted some notable holidaymakers over the years. Charles Darwin, Lewis Carroll, Richard Strauss, George Eliot, and Queen Victoria’s son-in-law, Frederick III have all strolled along that prom*. See that souvenir shop at the shore end of the pier? Like George Eliot, I bought my very firstCommando comicthere.
*Where the brass bands played, tiddely-om-pom-pom
Sandown bleeds into unremarkable Lake which, in turn, bleeds into leafy, cliff-perched Shanklin, a destination the Ward Lock heaps praise upon…
“Go where you will, you will find few prettier towns, none more happily situated… There is no cool green corner in the Island like Shanklin… It’s a town full of tasteful erections that the eye dwells on with pleasure.”
Apologies for the “turbulence” ladies and gentlemen. I think I better take the controls for a spell - I’d forgotten just how juvenile Roman’s sense of humour was.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
They succeeded, disabling the radar station that sat on this ridge, but it was to be one of the Ju 87’s last achievements in the Battle of Britain. Two days later, facing eye-watering Stuka losses, Goering decided that the type would fly no more over England.
(Clickherefor Part II)
