After reporting about the rescue of four people who had attempted the St Helens Fort walk on the Isle of Wight at the weekend, David Champion shares his experience, which luckily took place without the need to call out the emergency services. In his own words. Ed
On Sunday night (14th August), I partook in something which as an islander I’d always wanted to but had always missed. I walked to the fort off the coast of Bembridge which is only accessible during the low spring tides of August.
People have been doing the fort walk for roughly half a century. It used to be a predominately private affair for the people of Bembridge. However word spread and the modern fort walk is a kind of vast pilgrimage with over 100 people, young and old taking part.
Calm sea helped the start of the walk
We arrived at Ducie Beach just before the lowest part of the tide and started to wade out with the first few tentative walkers. We trudged through the water which stayed oddly at a solid mid-thigh depth for a good few hundred metres.
The sea was calm and the bottom was sandy. After a fair while the water got deeper and before long we were chest deep.
It seemed that something with the timing had gone wrong and people were considering turning back. However we persevered and the sandy bottom eventually gave way to a ridge made up of smooth rounded stones.
When walking on the ridge the depth of the water returned to the familiar mid-thigh depth and the fort stood dead ahead, silhouetted against the horizon at the end of our stony walkway.
Sore feet for the barefooted
For those who lacked appropriate footwear (me being one of them) this became a pretty painful experience, with the stones pressing hard in to the soles of your feet.
The barefooted walkers welcomed the deepening of the water with the added buoyancy factor taking some of the weight off the tender feet. After a while it became a matter of just gritting your teeth and wading onwards.
The sense of tradition, the pure eccentricity of the event and the feeling of a shared goal amongst the walkers created a real sense of camaraderie, and every person pushing, panting and splashing their way closer to the fort had a smile on their face.
The majestic fort
The fort is about a quarter of a mile from the coast and it took about 20 minutes to reach it. The tide was low enough to expose the whole of the rock island on to which the fort is fused.
When walkers reach the structure, the correct and traditional procedure is to climb up on to the raised parapet which runs around the whole fort about four feet above the rocks and do a lap before returning.
When up on the parapet you got a real sense of how solid and imposing the structure is.
They were built to repel naval invasion and to protect the shipping hub of Portsmouth. They can be seen dotted along the length of the coast, ready to blast any invading ships as they sailed up the bottleneck of the Solent.
Little sign of decay
The whole fort is made out of huge blocks of dully glinting granite which have stood stoically in the face of the worst of the Solent’s weather since 1879. The blocks show no sign of erosion or decay and the fort could probably stand there for a few millennia without much trouble.
Once we’d circumnavigated the fort, a few nervous voices started to chirp up about returning, as the lowest point of the tide had already been and gone.
As we started to trudge back in to the lukewarm water it was suddenly apparent that it was much deeper than on the journey to the fort.
Keep calm and carry on
In the distance a few people could be seen with water up to their necks and the race was on to get back. Children perched high up on fathers’ shoulders and small boats hovered around ready to pluck anyone in trouble out of the water. We pushed on through the deepest part but everyone around was still all smiles.
We eventually made it back to the shallows and up on to the beach. We stood and watched the exposed necks and heads of the last of the stragglers pushing through the water until everyone was out.
We capped the evening off with a barbeque and watched the sea reclaim the island on which the fort sits. I was glad to have done the walk and I felt as if I’d completed an islander’s rite of passage.
Images: 1st Ian A Kirk under CC BY 2.0
3/4th from a 2009 Fort Walk by The Bunny Maker under CC BY 2.0
