Isle of Wight Coast Path

ISLE OF WIGHT

TREK

WALK

Isle of Wight Coast Path – Day One

Friday 04 August 2017

Day One – Ryde to East Cowes

I will be the first to admit that the Isle of Wight Coast path was not particularly high up on my trekking bucket list. I knew that the path existed and that it was around sixty-five miles long but that was about it.

Susan had planned a trip to Thailand but found herself with a spare week of holiday that she did not want to waste and had been looking at doing something short and inexpensive. I didn’t have any time off planned for August so Susan was looking at something she could do on her own and had started to look at the Isle of White Coast Path. After a little research, Susan concluded that it would be too expensive to do the path using B&B’s and there were not enough hostels in the right places to make it possible.

I suggested camping, but this was quickly rejected on the basis that Susan did not want to carry all of the camping gear in a big heavy rucksack.

After a bit of juggling, I managed to re-arrange my working week so that I could go with Susan and carry all of the camping gear so after contacting a few campsites to make sure they would accept walk-ons we booked our ferry tickets.

The morning of the trek arrived and we started with a 3 mile walk to the ferry terminal before we could actually start.

Accommodation

We stayed at the Waverley Park Holiday Centre. We had emailed them in advance to make sure they would accept walk-ons. The staff here were great. They emailed back advising us to stay elsewhere because it was the last day of Cowes Week. She explained that the site would be full with family groups watching the fireworks from the campsite and that they would be having live music etc. We decided to stay there anyway because, other than wild camping, there were no other options nearby.

When we arrived, the woman managing the site let us stay on a little lawn area away from the main site and even let us charge our phones etc in her office. It was noisy, but we got to see a great firework display and slept OK with ear plugs.

The start of the Isle of Wight coastal path.

Ryde Pier. The Ferry lands at the bottom of the pier.

Remains of Cistercian Abbey now a house?

Wild Camping at Waverley Park Holiday Centre

The Route

Distance : 10.6 Miles

We started this section from Ryde having caught the passenger ferry from Portsmouth. Although this is a coastal path, this entire section is inland almost as soon as you leave the sea front at Ryde. You can easily buy provisions in Ryde before you start or at East Cowes when you arrive. There are very few opportunities in between. There is a lot of lane/road walking in this section and you have to pass through several small housing estates. It is not the most inspiring first day for a coastal walk. The distance for this section is only 7.6 Miles but we walked 3 miles from our accomodation in Portsmouth to get to the ferry terminal.

Click HERE for a GPX file of the route.

David Welch – View Profile

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