Kurt spends his time trotting the world seeking the finest. He’s a respected reviewer with over 20 years experience, so knows a thing or two about it and isn’t shy to give his opinion – Ed.
My last little piece might have given you the idea that I’m in favour of what is laughably called in property circles ‘development’, as if it involved some kind of positive progress.
In principle, I’m not.
If Ventnor Esplanade could be made up of buildings such as St Augustine Villa, or that beautifully restored (formerly yowlingly yellow) house next to the Blue Meanie, and of those little fisherman’s and beach cottages, I’d say splendid! Perfect! But it can’t be.
Simple re-modelling needed
Destruction has been done, modern ‘re-creation’ would be sterile: what is there now needs simply to be remodelled to include opportunities for Me (as the personification of the free-spending visitor) to come down to Ventnor and flash my cash so agreeably that I want to come back and do it again and again, and have such a good time doing it …
And that, I promise you, is not going to be in any Penny Arcade, however cute.
I promised to give you the two reasons why I don’t come. Why, when I leave my ‘mountain-top’ on St Catherine’s Downs, I go off to other parts of the Island and not towards the shops of Ventnor. It’s easy. Parking and Food.
Parking and Food
Parking is, of course, in all its forms, the Wightish nightmare.
I don’t believe I know another place where, on a road barely able to cope with two small cars passing, folk simply stop their cars at the roadside and wipe out one of the two lanes. I’m getting used to it, but I’ve had a few dangerous encounters with short-term tourists who are not!
The roads evidently can’t be changed, so perhaps the rules should be? Before someone is killed?
Parking should be free
But that isn’t what stops my coming to Ventnor. It is being asked (if that is the word) to pay, at abusive rates, for the privilege of parking my car, simply to go to that Island rarity, the ATM, or to Goodman’s delectable deli, or to other places where I might otherwise shop. And, when I’ve shopped, and I want to lunch, if I shift my car to another park, I pay all over again.
By the time I’ve shopped and eaten (spend one, spend two) I’ve spent (three) a fiver or more on parking. Well, I’m sorry, I just won’t do it. Just as I won’t stop in Bonchurch, where even a square of grass overlooking the sea has a parking meter. Or in Yarmouth.
To Hell with such extortion
To Hell with such extortion, is what I say. Why should I pay to spend my money? So I shop instead at Niton, at Chale Green Stores, at Rookley, and I head out to country pubs (of which heaps more anon) for the lunch that otherwise I might have eaten in Ventnor.
I say ‘might have’. Because””and here’s my second quibble — I haven’t yet found anywhere (*update below) in this part of Ventnor – from the poshest restaurant to the pub – that I would go back to a second time for a meal.
Details of my disappointments in that department available if you want them.
Ventnor of my dreams
If I were King of Ventnor, I’d like to see your splendid bay … pedestrianised into a promenade, of course — looking something like the nice end of Sitges “¦ a row of lively, bustling, little restaurants and bars, serving good, fresh and simply-made English food (if I want Filipino I’ll go to Manila, if I want bar-snacks disguised as ‘tapas’, I’ll go to Spain).
Imagine a nice green lawn with tables, stretching down to the sands, where that ‘beer garden’ is at the moment. Imagine what is now the road thronged with merry drinkers and eaters, imagine … well, you get my Utopian idea?
“I’d be down there doing it, every night”
Utopian it probably is, but I’d be down there doing it, every night. As long, that is, as the nice big parking areas at each end of the Esplanade were free.
And I’ll bet that half the tourists in Wight (and a good few locals) would be there as well.
Dreams are free. But not necessarily foolish.
(*) Postscript: As soon as one puts finger to keyboard, something happens to make one a liar. I have now found a superb place to eat in Ventnor .. with its own parking .. and another on the edge of town to which I go back this weekend..
Image: Free Parking by alancleaver_2000 under CC BY 2.0
Sitges: © Used with the kind permission of Kurt Gänzl
