A trip back

When I was 12 I lived in East Cowes, shown above on the left of the creek they call the River Medina.
The next year we moved across to West Cowes.


The two sides of Cowes are joined by a chain ferry.


The constant to-and-fro of yachts on the Medina with their tall masts makes a bridge impossible.


We rented a flat near the chain ferry. For a week we had the shortest address in England:
31 Marinus, Cowes, IW
IW is the recognized abbreviation for Isle of Wight.
Our bedroom window is the one obscured by a “Honda” flag.


This photo was taken from our bedroom window at Marinus. You can see the chain ferry with cars loading.


Chain ferry starting to unload, West Cowes.


Here’s a view from our lounge. The Victorian houses look just like the back of ours, here in land-locked Wye Vale, Buckinghamshire.


Taken from our balcony.


The same, at dawn.


This hammerhead crane has loomed on the skyline since 1912, when Cowes had a dockyard & built ships for the Royal Navy & other clients. I’m always pleased to see things unchanged since childhood, like this and the chain ferry.


As a boy I saw it as majestic and terrible, and somehow linked to my new stepfather, an engineer working on the Princess Flying Boat, itself an engineers’ dream that took off for a few test flights, but never commercially.
To be continued in my next.