Our thanks to Chris Welsford for this report from one of the walks he led as part of the Isle of Wight Walking Festival last weekend. In his own words. Ed
At 3:30am with a full moon to light the way, twelve adventurers began the race against ‘time and tide’ from Ventnor along the foreshore to Whitecliff Bay via the Nostrils.
As the moon faded behind the clouds, they soon donned headlamps for the hard scramble across the rocks of the recently sea covered foreshore between Bonchurch and Shanklin.
Some walkers found the rock-hop in the dark very challenging and the group arrived at Shanklin a little later than planned.
Arrived in Yaverland by 6am
The 5mph catch-up pace through Sandown Bay gave the more experienced walkers an edge over the teenagers, but everyone managed to arrive at Yaverland by the 6am deadline where they changed into training shoes and stowed their clothes and valuables in dry bags before heading out to the Charybdis Passage.
The group leader called the Coastguard, so any well intentioned reports from boats at sea about people on the rocks under the cliffs would not trigger off a search and rescue operation.
Harry Sharman wreck visible
The group then began the walk across the sand towards the towering chalk rock face of Culver Cliff.
Moving close under the cliffs along the weed covered ledges the group passed the wreck of the Harry Sharman, which came to grief whilst fighting the blaze of the Pacific Glory over 40 years ago.
Extremely low tide eased the passage
A few hundred feet further on they arrived at the collapsed cave and where usually they would have been wading chest deep in chilly sea water, Charybdis Passage, the 40m stretch from the collapsed cave to the Nostrils, was almost completely dry.
This was extremely unusual and lowest tide the leaders had seen since the first Charybdis Passage back in 2009.
17 mile round trip
After a group photo in the Nostrils they made our way round into Whitecliff Bay, back over the top of Culver and through the Landslip home to Ventnor by 11am a total distance of 17 miles.
