We're all going on a funny holiday #Part1

I'd never visited the Isle Of Wight before this year, and always imagined it full of yacht club types and aspiring millionaires. This is thanks largely to childhood memories of news stories about Edward Heath and my growing alienation from Conservative Politics as I moved into adulthood. Whilst I pride myself on generally trying to being non-judgemental of others, I do struggle a lot with the "upper classes" or the "privileged". Here is a Monty Python audio sketch called "Teach Yourself Heath" which made me giggle this morning. Making a connection with "ordinary" voters is so important for politicians isn't it? Somehow certain accents just sound condescending don't they?

Anyway back to our jollydays, the Isle of Wight is significant for Mr Stayingawake due to family holidays he spent there, most summers as a child the family took a caravan holiday in the same resort(more about that later). 

We took a trip south from our resort to a place called Blackgang Chine, I had never heard the word Chine before, but the Isle of Wight is a great place to learn about them as there are apparently 20 Chines. "Chine" comes from the Saxon word "Cinan" which means gap or yawn. They appear at small river valley outlets, usually where a waterfall over a sandstone or clay cliff edge causes erosion and deepens the river bed into a steep sided gully.

At the site of what used to be the Chine was built the first Theme Park in the United Kingdom (allegedly), by this guy(see right) Alexander Dabell. At this time he had noticed that Victorian visitors to the area were drawn to the 500 foot Chine with it's breathtaking views; and he decided to capitalise on it. This was in the year 1843 so that makes this year the Theme Park's 170th anniversary. The other interesting thing about this park is that the same family still own it. Dabell started by building paths down to the sea but soon realised he would have to find other attractions to keep people coming back. Sadly there are no paths down to the beach today - the last one fell away into the sea in 1913.

Antique Print of the Chine in 1870 - (can be purchased here).

The first attraction was the skeleton of a Whale, still displayed at the Theme Park, which was originally washed up further round the coast.

Dabell bought the Whale's body, sold the blubber, bleached the bones and displayed the skeleton at the Chine for the visitors to see.

Mr Stayingawake remembers the Skeleton as being at the entrance to the Park but it is now in a visitor centre which has displays about the history and geology of the Chine and of the Park itself. In the centre there is also some reference to the history of dinosaur Palaeontology on the Isle of Wight.

You may know that the Isle of Wight is a treasure trove for Palaeontologists and over 20 species of dinosaur have been identified on the Island since the first discovery in 1829. People still go to the Isle of Wight and spend time fossil hunting.

Since the 60s and 80s the Park has become more of a  children's/family theme park, inspired by Disney's success and a new boom in leisure businesses of this kind. You may ask what Mr Stayingawake and I were doing in there, having no children to take in. Not somewhere that his family could afford to visit much as children, due to the numbers of them and the cost; he has fond memories and wanted to show me all of the places he remembered.

Mr Stayingawake at Blackgang Chine in the 70's.

The day we went to visit, it was grey, rainy and blustery. The park was almost deserted and Mr Stayingawake was shocked to see how much more of the cliff had fallen into the sea. The last time he was there was 10 years ago when he took his own children.

This really interesting site shows photographs of the effects of erosion on the Chine and the Park over the years. The cliffs here are sitting on a layer of Gault(black clay) and landslips are common after heavy rain. The cliff is calculated to be disappearing into the sea at a rate of 3.5 meters a year and the Park itself is moved further inland each time.

Blackgang Chine - Looking West April 2013

Looking East - April 2013

Dinosaurs clinging onto the cliff - April 2013

Talking Telescope - shame it was so misty. April 2013

Walking through the park itself was like walking back into the 1950's or 60's. Full of whimsy and eccentricity. In fact I learned whilst researching for this blog post that it had been featured for it's uniqueness in a book "Bollocks to Alton Towers" and a documentary based on the book. The book features "uncommonly British days out". The whole place, in fact many places on the Island remind me of an elderly relative and all things 50's, 60's and 70's. Nostalgia city. Oh by the way I wasn't born in the 50's but if you knew the family who looked after me from age 7 you would understand why I am reminded of the 50s.

The whole of the rhyme written on the walls. April 2013.

I found a website that gives a chronology of the attractions, and which I found very interesting.

This Crooked House walk through attraction was installed in 1968 and was one of the first attractions of this type. I suppose you would call it a tableau type attraction.

Rumpus Mansion - April 2013

Another walk through tableau, set in a lovely old building that is on the Park. Rumpus Mansion was added more recently in 1993 but still seems to have that flavour of family entertainment from times gone by. I must admit I was extremely scared whilst walking though here, especially when something hissed violently at me from the wall. Most of the attractions seemed to involve a lot of reading of rhymes and stories. Lovely for smaller children. I think whoever designed these really understood what would fascinate children.

Musical Pet Shop - April 2013

This very funny musical tableau is inside "The Pet Shop" (1992) and involves all the pets joining in harmony with a sing song.

The children (or adults in our case) press the buttons to start each of the animals singing. Highly amusing for me, I could have stayed in there all day.                                                                                   

Showing the latest landslip and Frontierland being moved back. April 2013

I was very amused by this "Wild West Graveyard"(see below), and spent a lot of time reading the signs and groaning.

There is so much more of interest and I managed to find a guy with a very suspect youtube name, but who has a range of playlists on his youtube channel about the Isle of Wight. One of the lists is all about Blackgang and has clips of old cine-film and an interesting radio programme about the place. I fell in love with it's quirkiness and the story of how it is slowly disappearing, and hope you enjoyed my brief peek inside too.