Cowes and Crows

We’ve never sailed into Cowes before, we’ve always come into Ryde via the hovercraft, on foot. This time we have our home with us, so Cowes it is. It’s such a calm ride over, it feels like we are sailing into the unknown, slightly (well, we are in fact doing just that), but it is beautiful. 

The island is full of beaches, hills, rural country lanes, small bungalows, posh mansions, tiny boats, and big yachts. It couldn’t be more different to the life we have left, and it’s inviting, sparkling, green and clean.

We’ve booked into a camp site for 3 weeks as wild camping doesn’t really work for this long on a small island, and as we have no idea how long we will need to wait, or even if the house purchase will proceeded (at the moment it is taking forever and seems to be going nowhere); it’s our best option. It’s off-season now and cheap as chips, despite the fact it’s perfect for our needs, and warm and sunny as can be.

There are 2 ‘sides’ to Cowes. Cowes, and East Cowes. It’s clear Cowes is THE Cowes; East Cowes is the poor relative. We sail into East Cowes, on the far side of the estuary from our campsite. Usually, it would be a 20 drive to our campsite, over the floating bridge, but it’s been out of action for months and there’s consternation across the island. For us it means a 40 minute drive, instead of a 20 minute one, into Newport and back out – we could wait 40 mins in a traffic jam to get to ASDA if the Blackwall tunnel was blocked and we used to walk there to in half an hour, so it’s no hardship. Our site is fab, it’s down a few country lanes, on a slight hill (there’s probably a whole blog, on the challenges of living on a slope in a van), but has all we need including it’s own beach. And our ferry queue neighbours are here, they spotted our ‘chimney’ and came to say hi. Van life is like that, people stop to chat, say pull up a chair, have a beer (currently they bring their own and sit at a distance), but it’s full of friendly folk who love to chat.  The site is fairly empty, but we do have lots of neighbours – of the Crow variety.