My Special Place

Yacht Club c1955
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My Seaview experiences started from shortly after I was born and go right up to the present day. I'm from Reading, Berks, but our whole family used to rent a big house somewhere in Seaview every summer for a holiday. I was born in 1962, so I joined the Seaview summer holiday scene shortly after that. The family started with my maternal grandmother and extended down to her four children and then all of their children (16 of us). For several years we rented a house called Windy Ridge in Ferneyclose Road (which drops right down to Seagrove Bay). Then, for another several years, we rented the Garnett's house, Horestone Point, further on up Ferneyclose Road. After that, the different chunks of the family split up to do their own separate holidays. But my parents carried on with Seaview holidays, renting a house on Seaview Duver for some years. Oh, and one year we rented either Salterns or Saltmeads Cottage at the junction of Bluett Avenue and the Duver! And then our bit of the family got older and did different things. By then (early 80s), I was in my late teens. Our family didn't necessarily have a regular holiday together any more. And I hadn't developed a replacement social scene for myself. But one thing that I kept doing was gong over to the Island on my own at least once every year. I could drive by then and so would go around the whole Island. I'm now with "Prim" and we go over to the Island every year for a camping holiday. We usually camp off the Military Road, between Brighstone and Chale (Atherfield), but we go into Seaview regularly. The Isle of Wight, and especially Seaview, is a very special place for me. I feel that Seaview's in my blood. But I worry! Every time I pop into the Seaview Hotel (a foundation stone of Seaview for me) for a coffee or a bar snack, I worry that maybe it will have turned into some sort of modern, plastic hotel-a-like! Or that the Old Fort Cafe will have become a nightclub! Well, I'd genuinely like to live over on the Island one day. But we'll see.