Day 5 - Ticket to Ryde

Day 5 - Lymington to Ryde

I’d like to say that I'd spent a pleasant night at the Angel Inn. On the face of it, it didn’t look at all bad – low-ceilinged rooms, oak beams a-plenty and the floors so warped that a stroll down the corridor gave you the feeling of being cast adrift in a storm. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why each bedroom is named after someone associated with the sea – my room was called ‘Captain Tom Johnstone' who, I discovered, was a notorious local smuggler and a man of great charisma who was reportedly adored by ‘women, children, dogs and horses’. Horses? Really?

What really cost me an easy night’s sleep, though was it’s other residents. 

Two weeks before starting my trip, I began typing out an itinerary to remind me where I would be sleeping each night. I couldn’t find my booking details for Lymington so I did a quick internet search to find the address and, lo and behold, there it was:

“The Angel Inn, Lymington, reputed to be one of the most haunted pubs in…”

I quickly looked away, my blood chilled as my imagination took over.

“Right, Mr. Lynn, here’s your room key. We’ve given you a nice room overlooking the courtyard, it’s fully en suite, of course, there’s tea and coffee making facilities and a colour TV. Oh yes, and there’s a ghost of a headless corpse in the wardrobe, but don’t worry, he generally stops wailing about midnight. Breakfast is at 8.30…”

The Angel, in fact, is said to be home to no less than two ghosts, one a tall seaman dressed in a long naval coat and the other a coachman who is seen standing peering out of the kitchen window. The inn is also said to have no less than six poltergeists. None of this information promotes a restful night’s sleep. Call me a softie but I hardly slept a wink. The expectation of being woken in the middle of the night by a dismembered chambermaid wandering through your room can put a serious crimp in your night’s rest. And, of course, being hundreds of years old and made mostly of unseasoned timber, the blasted building did nothing but creak ominously all night long.

I therefore enjoy a bleary-eyed breakfast in the pub downstairs the next morning, but I'm sufficiently awake to read some text which had been artfully painted in copperplate on a beam in the dining room.

“The Telegraph Coach left this inn every day at 5.00am and 5.45pm. Southampton in 2 ½ hours, London in 11 hours.”

Over my poached eggs on toast, I work out that the 18.5 miles to Southampton were covered at a rate of a little more than 7 miles per hour, with the longer journey to London averaging about 9 miles per hour – not quick, but still much quicker than the horse drawn wagons of the 16th and 17th centuries some of whom barely managed a few miles per day. So what had changed to suddenly make travel much quicker?

Even by the eighteenth century, standards of road-making were little better than they had been in medieval times, mostly because maintenance was carried out by local men who were compelled to do the work unpaid. The Highways Act of 1555, which was still in force in the 1830’s, stipulated that every householder or labourer had to offer four days of labour per year unpaid to repair their village’s roads. This meant repairs were left to an unskilled conscripted work force who were compelled to work on the roads often at the busiest time of the farming year – not a recipe for diligence or high quality work.

The Turnpike at Debtford

The government had tried to keep the roads in reasonable order by a host of other means, all of them proscriptive and none of them successful. The size of wheeled carriages and wagons were severely limited, with extra wide wheel rims stipulated in the hope that they would roll the road surface flat. The number of horses allowed to pull them and the overall weight of each vehicle were also limited by law.

The state of the roads was a particular concern to manufacturers and merchants who saw how they were limiting opportunities for business. So they began banding together to form turnpike trusts with the aim of creating properly-surfaced roads. At first, progress was slow but by the 1830’s there were some 22,000 miles of turnpike roads in England and Wales – about a fifth of the total road network.

As turnpike trusts were conceived by entrepreneurs, it's not surprising that they attracted men with new ideas on how roads should be built – men like John Metcalfe, known as ‘Blind Jack of Knaresborough’ and who, despite being completely blind, oversaw the construction of some 180 miles of high quality road in Yorkshire and Lancashire; former stonemasons like Thomas Telford, and engineers like John MacAlpine. Together, they helped produce a network of toll roads that were smoother and more direct than the old parish roads and allowed substantial reductions in journey times. The construction of stage coaches improved, too, making travel more comfortable and more popular. Journeys which used to be measured in days could, like the journey from Lymington to Southampton, now be completed in hours.

But my thoughts are not only on turnpikes this morning. Before turning in last night, I took a stroll to Lymington Quay where I was to catch the ferry to the Isle of Wight the next morning. Anything to avoid having to go to bed, frankly, but I also wanted to know what time I had to leave after breakfast to be sure I made the ferry. It proved to be a 20 minute walk from the Angel Inn to the ferry - a not inconsiderable walk with a heavy rucksac.

I was standing at the ferry terminal car park considering the implications of this when I spotted what appeared to be a train rolling straight across the car park straight towards me. I looked again and discovered a previously unseen railway line leading to an equally unspotted platform across the car park from the ferry terminal. Aha, I said. Lymington Quay has a railway station, then.

I was about to dismiss this – after all, I’d said I wouldn’t use heavy rail of any kind on this journey - until the train itself caught my attention. It was one of those ancient slam-door trains I used to ride in when I lived in Surrey and travelled regularly up to London. These had been banished from the Waterloo to Portsmouth line years ago and replaced with more refined, though no less crowded, new trains and I’d assumed that these old heroes had gone to the breakers yard years ago. Yet here they were, and still in service.

I took a closer look. Instead of being painted in South West Trains livery, the train had been painted in old-fashioned British Railways green with a ceremonial nameplate on the front of the leading coach declared “Slamdoors Say Farewell to the Lymington Flyer”. A quick chat to the guard confirmed that this was indeed the slam-door train’s last week in service.

“Shame, really” he said. “Next week we’ll have smelly diesels on this line. I think people will miss these old girls.”

Old is right. The first slamdoor trains left the production lines in York in 1964 and for more than 30 years carried tens of millions of commuters and day-trippers between Brighton, Portsmouth and London. But recent concerns about doors which passengers could open while the train was in motion meant they were taken out of service, apart from a couple that were living out a gentile retirement on the Brockenhurst to Lymington branch line. And now that was to end, too.

I was caught in two minds. Should I stick to my commitment to only use local public transport and avoid railways, or should I take one final opportunity to celebrate a little bit of transport history by riding on one of the last slamdoor trains in service in Britain. It seemed an opportunity too good to miss.

Next morning sees me waiting on the platform at Lymington Town station for the barely two minute ride to Lymington Quay, a journey which sees me immersed in the sounds and smells of my youth. Stepping down from a slamdoor for the last time ever, I make sure I give the door behind me a hearty slam for old time’s sake, deeply satisfying for me though possibly less so for the family of four who were, unbeknown to me, following me out of the door. Still, no real damage done and at least it gives Dad a chance to practice his Anglo Saxon….

Fresh from my train journey I embark for the short ferry crossing to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. I am rather looking forward to this part of the trip; I love the whole theatre of a sea crossing, all those unfamiliar bells and clangs, and men in thick oily sweaters throwing ropes and chains around. It’s all such a performance. Eventually, with a prime seat on the for’ard sun deck from where I can enjoy the crossing in full, our trim and purposeful Wightlink ferry begins to thread its way carefully out of Lymington’s creek and out onto the Solent.

Lymington and the Isle of Wight beyond

It’s amazing how, even on a sunny May day like today, as soon as you have leave the shelter of land the temperature drops about 30 degrees. The breeze off the Solent may be light but it is determined and chilly. I tough it out and soon arrive with freshened complexion at the little port of Yarmouth.

I’d chosen to visit the Isle of Wight for several reasons. First, for someone purportedly doing a journey exploring transport history, it looks bad that I hadn’t visited a transport museum yet and the island offers the first opportunity to do so. Secondly, I am looking forward to traveling on the island’s unique railway system which I’d discovered on a previous visit (yes, I know its another train but there's a good reason for this). Then there is the stimulus of a ferry crossing to get there. And finally, of course the Isle of Wight is a delightful place to visit at any time.

Within minutes of landing I am onto a bus again, this time an open-topper to one of the island’s most popular resorts, past Alum Bay with its cliffs of gaudy coloured sand. From there it is onwards up the scary and exposed cliff road to an abandoned fort on the island’s most westerly tip overlooking its most famous landmark, The Needles.

Perched high above these chalky cliffs is The Needles Old Battery, built during the 1860's in response to Britain’s then uncertain diplomatic relationship with France. Though the guns are long gone, the site has been restored with care by the National Trust and is worth a visit, not least for the view of The Needles you get from the tiny observation post and searchlight emplacement set into the cliff face and reached by means of a (reputedly haunted) tunnel. 

Island Breezer service arrives at The Needles

This site was also the unlikely home of part of Britain’s nuclear rocket programme, though little of this now remains. Local aeronautical firm Saunders Roe used this very site to test rocket engines for their potent little Black Knight rockets before they were sent to the Australian outback for proper test flights. Though scrapped in 1970, the Black Knight retains an important place in British aviation history as the first and only British-designed rocket to put an all-British satellite into orbit. It’s short history is recounted in a fascinating exhibition inside one of the programme’s original underground bunkers.

I spend an hour or so lounging in the sun on the chalky, Cowslip-strewn grass before catching the bus back to Yarmouth and my onward journey to Newport. I have about 40 minutes to spare, so I take a walk around this pretty little port and along the restored Yarmouth Pier, built in 1876 by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway to service their paddle steamers from the mainland. In fact, steamers had been visiting Yarmouth since the 1830’s so the later addition of a pier presumably removed the need for passengers to leap bodily from their ship onto the rocks along the shore. Ferries really opened up the island to tourism and though it is little more than a tourist attraction itself today, the pier is now the only remaining wooden pier in Britain which is still open to the public. 

My bus to Newport duly arrives and I’m soon on the move again. The principal bus company on the island is Southern Vectis, an exotic-sounding and faintly nautical name which sounds commanding and eminently fit for purpose. Which is more than can be said for the road out of Yarmouth, which is dreadful – little more than a patchwork of holes crudely glued together with tarmac. I can’t imagine how people put up with it. It’s a pity - the eastward ride towards Newport offers sublime views of the island’s lovely chalk downland scenery and fabulous views out over the Solent. Unfortunately, our bus is bouncing and vibrating such that it’s all but impossible to focus on the seat in front, let alone anything out of the window. 

Yarmouth

The bus jiggles and bangs its way briskly through the narrow country lanes to Carisbrooke, though I miss its spectacular castle as I’m momentarily distracted by a motorcycle dealership named, rather alarmingly, Dave Death Motorcycles. Then we are down into Newport where, shaken but definitely not stirred, I'm off in search of the Isle of Wight Bus Museum which I track down to an anonymous industrial unit on Newport’s riverside quay. 

The museum opened in 1999 and has a pleasingly eccentric collection of vehicles, including a rather unusual open-topped single decker, a 1927 Daimler which looks like it would probably take about a million man hours to restore, and a very odd Bristol double decker which after a useful life with Southern Vectis was bought by two vets who converted it into a mobile home for a trip across Europe. This proved so successful that the entrepreneurial vets eventually acquired a whole fleet of them, converted them to mobile homes and with the business name Top Deck Travel began operating an extensive foreign tour programme. 

This particular bus – named ‘Tadpoles’ - operated on the Far East run through Europe and Asia to Kathmandu, a journey that would normally take three months to complete each way, and which Tadpoles completed no less than 20 times before its engine finally gave up. She got home minus one cylinder and was immediately wheeled into the museum where she is on permanent display in all her unrestored glory.

I am hungry for company so I fall into conversation with Peter Harris, a museum volunteer who is in charge of admissions. 

“We’ve got a fairly small collection of vehicles here,” admitted Peter. “But we’ve twice as many buses stored all over the island in barns and garages, so there’s a lot more buses we can call on for Open Days and the like. It’s a lack of space, really.”

Their museum, he said, faces an uncertain future.

“This building is leased from the council – it's a shed, really but it’s in a prime quayside redevelopment area. We’ve only got a short lease, rents are going up and we are pretty sure it is only a question of time before the Council decides not to renew it.”

The museum had been working on a plan to re-locate into a purpose-built building close to the island's preserved steam railway and the council's planning department were being pretty helpful, too. It was going to be expensive but do-able. However, negotiations dragged on and eventually the planners who had been so helpful were replaced by planners who were less so. Their favoured option, the museum was told, was now much less likely to receive planning permission.

Does it have a future? Let’s hope so. These are good people and it would be pity for such an interesting and eccentric collection of vehicles, uniforms, ticket machines and a million other small items to be scattered into private sheds and garages across the island.

It's a short walk back into the centre of Newport, then I'm back on a bus, this time to Shanklin on the south coast of the island. 

I was always going to include the Island Line in my journey. Yes, it’s a railway and I’m not supposed to, but this is definitely 'local' transport and not part of the national network. Moreover, I want to ride the Island Line because it is a piece of living history. Amazingly, the island's railway system relies on former Underground trains which saw service during the Blitz. If you think of those black and white photos of people sleeping on the platforms of Underground stations while Nazi bombs rained down overhead, with trains passing a few inches from their heads, these are the very trains that are to carry me on the final leg of today’s journey to Ryde.

Island Line train, circa. 1938

It's an eccentric choice of rolling stock, but the reason is simple - the Ryde Esplanade Tunnel. This was always prone to flooding so to solve the problem the engineers decided to raise the track bed. This had the unfortunate effect of reducing the tunnel’s headroom to 10 inches less than that required by ordinary trains. As a result, the Island Line has always had to be worked by unusually small rolling stock.

The railway somehow survived Dr Beeching's axe but when British Railway’s withdrew steam traction in the 1960’s the railway had to find new rolling stock quickly. Rather than build expensive new trains, the idea of using old Tube trains from London Underground was suggested as a cost-effective solution. Some 43 ex-London Underground carriages of so-called “Standard” stock were procured, repainted and adapted to work on the island, beginning their new life in the open air in March 1967. These had been built between 1922 and 1934 and were only expected to last 10 years or so, but many lasted more than twice that before they were considered beyond economic repair. Then in 1988, maintaining the tradition of using Underground cast-offs, they were replaced by some of the last of London Underground’s hugely-successful but already redundant 1938 tube stock which were already 50 years old.

It is one of these 1938 models that I find rolling towards me as I wait on Shanklin's single platform. To my reckoning, these lovely old trains have been in loyal service for more than 70 years. OK, they rattle a bit but they seem easily up to the job and in their pristine paintwork they look rather wonderful. 

I get shivers down my spine to think that these very trains were operating during the worst of the London blitz, and that people sitting in the same seat as I might have been returning home worried in case their home had become yet another charred shell. A ride on the Island Line is a ride back in time and its definitely worth the modest cost of the ticket.

Ryde

I get off the train reluctantly at Ryde Esplanade and make my way to my seaside guest house. A beer, a quick meal and a stroll on the beach has me pretty much ready for bed. I’m about to head back to the candlewick bedspread, the peeling wallpaper and the dripping tap in the corner when I hear what sounds like a pair of fighter aircraft coming in low to strafe the beach. I turn to see a huge plume of spray in the distance and what appears to be a spaceship belting towards me over the sand. Then I remember.

Ah, yes. Tomorrow I'm heading back to the mainland… by hovercraft.

NEXT Ryde to Brighton – during which I experience a low-level flight across the Solent, discover an unexpected lack of queuing in Chichester, and arrive in Brighton on top of Ivor Novello.

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