Storms around Keyhaven

28th April 2009

Thursday is Experiment Day! Every Thursday I shall be trying out a new walk in Hampshire (or elsewhere) that is not in the New Forest. Should the "experiment" turn out to be unfavourable, there will be a consolation walk i.e. one I have done before and enjoyed. Given the vagueries of my work roster, Thursday may be titled "Third Day" instead; but it's the same thing

Unless you have a dental appointment that gets in the way, of course. And so this experiment took place on Tuesday instead of Thursday. Hopefully things will get back to normal soon.

This is another AA Walk and chosen because the weather forecast was so uncertain. Fine with showers, possibly heavy.

And this turned out to be another peach, with added cream, later washed down with buckets of water.

The environment itself is beautiful, marshland and mudflats with extensive views of the rolling Isle of Wight landscape ending in the great Tennyson Down and the Needles with their lighthouse. Sea and shingle beaches, a little marina and a Tudor Castle with World War II additions. And then the drama of the weather.

There are two free parking areas, as well as a pay and display near the waterfront. One of the free parking areas is quite small alongside the sea wall heading towards a dead end where the Solent Way starts off out on to a raised bank of gravel and grass around the marshes.

The other car park is at the landward end of the great shingle spit that supports Hurst Castle and a white lighthouse at it further end. The spit itself is still growing in length and is lined with poles that are measured from time to time to see how far the spit has shifted. The spit is also protected on the seaward side by defences constructed to resemble great boulders. I think they work; others may disagree.

Toffee crunch ice cream (with a flake) in hand, the walk along the spit to the Castle is about a mile and a half. With the waves of the Solent foaming on one side and the calm lagoon on the other, and the Isle of Wight rising up ahead, there is plenty to look at and admire and photograph.

Hurst Castle is run by English Heritage and costs £3.50 entry. To the east is Henry VIII's fortress, partially restored in the Victorian age and added to and patched with concrete during WWII. Charles I was also imprisoned here for a while. There is a display about Tudor fortresses in the Keep; the basement under the Keep is well worth a visit for sheer spookiness. The floor is black and barely visible.

If you fancy a different method of returning to the mainland, there is a little Ferry that shuttles back and forth between Hurst Castle (or the lighthouse when the tide is out) and Keyhaven every 20 minutes. The fare is £3 which you pay to the Ferryman. It is a very pleasant little journey between the mudflats and the yachts and the walk proper starts from the jetty.

Follow the seawall all the way around to a kissing gate on to the bank of the Solent Way and simply keep along it until just past the Dock Sluice at Oxey Marsh when the walk turns inland along a lane past Woodside Farm which peters out at a gate on to a byway/cycle path back to Kayhaven. As I was being closed in on by stormclouds from the east, I chose to curtail the walk by turning inland along a straight path leading directly away from an old jetty, just before Pennington Marshes. This path comes out at the gate to the byway/cycle path mentioned above. I had already chosen the lower inland path of the Solent Way as the dramatic skies, the forking lightning and thunderous rumbles from the east actually became too much for me. I think it was an irrational feeling of exposure on the higher ground with flatness stretching all around across marsh, mud and water and murderous black skies closing in.

I shall do better next time.

There are great views from the byway/cycle path across Keyhaven Marshes to Hurst Castle and the Isle of Wight. It was getting darker and darker as the clouds came ever closer overhead and all around, and the scene was changing spectacularly. For a while, hedges ran along both sides of the path bringing within their enclosure occasional clouds of midges.

At the end of the path is a gate and the end of the little road that contains the seawall-side parking area.

I still had to pass around the marina and out on to the Solent Way, another bank of shingle and grass, to get back to where I had parked my car. Just as I stepped out on to the bank, the black clouds parted and dumped water all over me, driven into my back by a sharp wind that was now blowing down from the north-east.

The scenery was no longer the warm, welcoming brightness of the sunny afternoon. It was becoming a grey, brooding early evening with the eastern reaches of the Island lost in thick mist and Tennyson Down now scowling over the Solent.

Eventually, with the novelty of the rainstorm beginning to wear off, I got back to my car and got out of wet weather jacket and boots. Wet weather trousers? Um, well, I hadn't taken the "possibly heavy" aspect of the showers as seriously as I should have and hadn't brought any. So although, yes, I got thoroughly soaked, it wasn't until I got out of the car back at home that the clamminess became all too apparent.

Next time, take wet weather trousers ...