This is where I am, although not when I am. Only a fraction of this railway network remains; today I joined some family members in riding the part that’s preserved as a steam heritage line.
I am not from the Isle of Wight. We moved there when I was fourteen; before that I knew it as a tourist; I’ve never lived there as an adult for more than a couple of months while I worked out what else I was meant to be doing. Many things would have to change to make it make sense for me to move back. And yet, I realised this year, Ventnor is the closest thing I have to a hometown. There’s a part of me that would love to hang out permanently in the Exchange, writing novels. Or walking along whichever bits of the coast haven’t fallen into the sea yet. Or both.
Every time I go back, something’s changed, something in the natural landscape or the human one, or both. And every time I go back it still manages to feel like home.
Kathleen Jowitt 