Could the Isle of Wight be getting its own answer to St Tropez?
News recently reached the Daytripping desk that a friend of the Duke of Sussex is planning to turn a small town or, truth be told, large village on the Isle of Wight into a British counterpart to St Tropez.
A closer read of the article revealed that Howard Spooner, a former business partner of Guy Pelly (who has been described, somewhat unfairly, as playing Five Bellies to Prince Harry’s Gazza during the latter’s man-about-town years), has taken on the lease of the George Hotel, a sturdy building next to the ferry port at Yarmouth, instead of the “beach club in St Tropez or something like that” which he had previously imagined himself acquiring. So some adjustment of expectations may have taken place between the wish and the deed.
But on a clear day, you can understand his confusion, if he was confused. The sunsets, in particular, are to die for on the western half of the island (you can’t say that for north-facing St Trop); there are cute visitor attractions and top-flight artisan food producers and a flourishing vintage-clothing scene.
There is no equivalent of the Musée de l’Annonciade, a small but world-class collection of pointillists and fauves – though one of the shops on the high street has a giant glass sculpture of a unicorn’s head in the window.
Yarmouth has a sleepy, second-homey character: small terraced cottages, narrow passages, courtyards. It’s tony and yachty (couple of C?te d’Azur points there) with little of the Fifties cockney vibe one finds elsewhere on the island; and it’s generally easy on the eye, though you’ll exhaust its pleasures fairly quickly.
But it’s one of those places where travelling hopefully is half the fun. I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend South Western Railway to my worst enemy, but if you can dodge the replacement bus service, try and get to Brockenhurst in the New Forest, where a shuttle train will whisk you to Lymington Pier (Brockenhurst and Lymington are quite nice too) in 10 minutes or so.
From here it’s a 40-minute ferry journey, with a view of the Needles, the island’s answer to the calanques of the Bouches-du-Rh?ne, arguably, off the starboard bow. You can score a beer from the Island Brewery, not to mention various products of the legendary Garlic Farm en route.
When you make landfall in Yarmouth, you’ll find the George Hotel just around the corner from the ferry port; here, once Mr Spooner has got his feet under the table, all the delights of the Riviera will be laid before you. Or some of them, anyway.
Seven cracking reasons to visit Yarmouth
The walk
The Isle of Wight coastal path passes through Yarmouth. To the east, it takes you inland around the back of Newtown Creek and then heads back towards Cowes, keeping a healthy distance from Parkhurst and Albany, the Island’s two Category B prisons. To the west, it passes Cliff End Battery, a somewhat dilapidated Palmerston folly, then continues towards Colwell, Totland, Alum (where the multicoloured sand comes from) and finally the spectacular Needles and Tennyson Down at the island’s tip.
The plantsacape
Torquay, Schmorquay: the English Riviera starts here. The cottages and bungalows of Yarmouth are festooned with enough al fresco aloe vera, echeveria and other succulents to delight a hundred hipsters’ hearts, throbbing with life and preaching a gospel of sunshine to come.
The shop
We would have to concede that, barring some dubious art shops, Yarmouth is no retail paradise. But in its blend of the whimsical (lobster soap on a rope) with the practical (cookware, Tilley hats, ammunition), not to mention its impressively retro signage, Harwoods Chandlers and Ironmongers is worth 10 minutes of anyone’s trolley-dashing time. There is also a nice second-hand bookshop.
The pub
We ought to nominate The George, which has an enticing menu and a garden on the water; but it’s a hotel rather than a pub. The Bugle along the road is the real, labyrinthine, horsebrass-bedecked, forehead-bruising McCoy, complete with an unexpectedly frank picture of a man resorting to desperate measures to win a snooker game against a local cleric in olden times.
The camelids
West Wight Alpacas and Llamas in Wellow, just outside Yarmouth, is a canonical example of the sort of cosy visitor attraction in which the island excels. Hang out with its long-necked and longer-eyelashed residents, refresh yourself at its café (pizza yes, ceviche, alas, no), buy wool and knitwear at its Yarn Barn.
The cafe
Gossips has a small outside terrace on the water, a pleasing, vaguely Dutch roofline and a nice line in crab sandwiches, baked potatoes etc. We liked the look of the Blue Crab, too.
The castle
Not much of a castle, in truth: more of a house with a very thick garden wall. You could always take in the more substantial remains of Hurst Castle, another fortification from the time of Henry VIII, outside Lymington on the way over – or score a day ticket on the local buses and head to Carisbrooke in the centre of the island. But Yarmouth Castle is prettily situated, we’ll give it that.