The Isle of Wight is a place of chalk paths, quiet corners and half‑forgotten stories. These pieces explore the island’s landscapes and older echoes, the downs, the chines, the weathered villages and the traces of lives that linger in names and places. A small map of quiet places and old stories, gathered together as the island shifts through the seasons.
The Isle of Wight: Quiet Places, Old Stories, and the Shape of the Island
The Isle of Wight has a way of getting under the skin. Not in a dramatic, brochure‑worthy sense, but in the quieter way a landscape settles into you when you’ve walked it often enough, the chalk underfoot, the sudden drop of a chine, the way the downs open out into light you didn’t expect.
This page gathers together everything I’ve written about the island so far: the places, the stories, the odd corners, and the small moments that don’t quite fit anywhere else. It’s partly for visitors who find themselves Googling the island in early summer, and partly for my own sense of order, a way of keeping the threads together. I should say some posts are ‘scheduled’ and will posts shortly.
June is usually when people start searching for the Isle of Wight again: walks, history, weather, legends, and the simple question of “what’s it like there just now”.
If you’ve arrived here through one of those searches, welcome.
Below is a collection of pieces that explore the island from different angles, landscape, history, folklore, and the shifting seasons.
Landscapes & Quiet Corners
These are the places where the island feels most itself: chalk, sea, wind, and the odd sense of being slightly outside time.
- Yaverland: Chalk Downs and Early Summer Light
- Mottistone Down and the Solitary Stone
- Bonchurch on a Stormy Day
- Ventnor and history of the town
- A Walk From Ventnor Park to Old St Lawrence Church
- Ventnor: the Island’s Lovable Oddity
- Monks Bay: History, Memory and the Isle of Wight
- The Squirrel Trail: Binding the Isle of Wight
- Ventnor Cemetery: Victorian Society on the Isle of Wight
- The Isle of Wight and Bee Orchids -Coming Soon
History, Folklore & Old Stories
The island’s past is never far away, sometimes obvious, sometimes half‑buried, sometimes only a name in a chronicle.
- Arwald: The Last Pagan King of the Isle of Wight
- Wayside Shrines and the Island’s Small Devotions
- Caedwalla: Sainthood, Memory, and the Island’s Saxon Echoes
- The Oglanders: Norman Knights On The Isle of Wight
- Les Oglander : chevaliers normands sur l’île de Wight
- Passion Bearers: An Exploration -An explanation of Arwald and Caedwalla
- HMCS Alberni and Saint Lawrence, Isle of Wight
- You Won’t Believe What Lies Under This Quiet Isle of Wight Beach
- Brading Parish Church: the Quiet Rhythms of an Isle of Wight Landscape
- Roman Britain: Isle of Wight. Trade, Contact and Archaeology
- St George’s Church, Arreton: the Evolution of Churchyards on the Isle of Wight
- The Isle of Wight: A Guide to History, Folklore, and Landscape
Seasons, Weather & the Everyday Island
Pieces that aren’t quite “travel writing” and not quite “history”, but something in between, the feel of the island month by month.
- March on the Isle of Wight: Nature Waking on a Fertile Island
- May on the Isle of Wight
- Storms, Closures, and the Changing Shape of the Coast – Coming Soon
Things that make the Island less liveable
- The long, grinding story of Island Roads and why islanders are so fed up
- The Isle of Wight’s Path Closures -Coming soon
Why This Page Exists
I’ve gathered these pieces here partly for my own sense of order, partly because Google appreciates a bit of structure, and partly because the Isle of Wight deserves its own corner as well as a page and category rather than a scatter of posts. It’s a small, coherent map of the things I’ve noticed. As I write more, I’ll add them, and as the island shifts with the seasons, this page will shift with it.