This blog post is about how we lost track of time at the peaceful seafront at St Helens on the Isle of Wight.
Introduction
If you know St Helens perhaps you wouldn’t think it’s possible to have a lazy few hours at the seaside location? Some would initially be more inclined to visiting another location instead, such as Sandown or Ryde. However St Helens is one of my favourite locations, and if you look closely, it has quite a bit to offer for a quiet location.
We had original planned a quick visit to St Helens, then hop onto a bus to Bembridge and finally onto the Zoo at Seaview. Things didn’t go to plan and we are grateful!
Getting to St Helens seafront
We took a bus from Ryde to St Helens, and headed in the direction of the coast. We were still at least a ten minute walk from the seafront, and stopped at a bench overlooking fields, salt marshes and the coastal view. We took the opportunity to open a flask and unwrap our veggie sausage sandwiches we had made earlier. It was a beautiful morning, and this view alone was worth the trip!
We headed off down a muddy track for five minutes, and once a wooden footbridge was crossed, we found ourselves overlooking salt marshes. We stuck to the path and weaved our way along in the direction of the seafront.
Once at the seafront
The ‘Baywatch On The Beach’ cafe was open and we purchased hot chocolate and tea, sitting outside at the seafront, in no rush, just chatting and enjoying the relaxed environment. Nearby a gentleman sat with a hot drink, reading a newspaper.
There are toilets at St Helens seafront.
Even though we had visited before, we hadn’t explored a couple of the seafront areas, so we headed off towards the beach huts, taking in the sea air, and other than a few people, it was a quiet morning on our visit.
We found a couple of benches and strolled along the seafront until we found a dead end.
We headed back to the church ruins. Most of the church having been claimed by the sea long ago.
The tide was in and we strolled near to the rock pools. In the photo below you can see a fort in the distance.
We strolled along to another beach area. At the tip of the beach some sea defence rocks blocked our path, but we decided to use them as seating instead. For some reason we felt a bit hungry early so opted to eat a bit of our lunch. Whilst doing so a young couple tried to climb the rocks, in a hope that it lead to another seafront, but gave up and disappeared up the stairs off the beach instead. For a while we just sat there, with a beach to ourselves.
As we got up to leave the tide was slowly going out and we headed to benches near to the ruined church to find a geocache, and after sat on a nearby bench. Once the tide had gone out we looked in the rock pools and spotted some small fish and a dead crab! Afterwards we took our time heading back up to the bench overlooking the fields, marshes and seafront, where we found another geocache.
We slowly strolled back to the green at St Helens, found another bench opposite the pub, and we spotted the bus appearing in the distance, crossed the road, hopped onto the bus and headed to Ryde.
Conclusion
We had taken so long at St Helens we decided to forget about our originally planned day out. It might not sound exciting to read about this particular trip, but it was relaxing and enjoyable and a peaceful experience.
Update March 2019: Since publishing this blog post, I’ve returned to St Helens many times. It is one of my favourite locations on the Isle of Wight.
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