Outdoor Photography: Island Journal Pt 19

In part 19 of Tracy Hallett's Island Journal, T catches up with Hayling Island and ponders what constitutes an island. The article appears in Outdoor Photography magazine, Issue 151, April  2012.

Postcards: Valentine's Hayling Island

T found this postcard in Lewes Town Hall market today. It was bought for the lovely scenes of Hayling Island in 1964 that are, for the most part, still familiar nowadays. It was only after closer inspection at home that we realised it was printed by Valentine's of Dundee. How satisfying.

A winter visit to Hayling Island - day 2

The alarm goes off at 6:25AM and we bundle into the icy car for another day at Hayling Island. The sun is well and truly up when we arrive at 7:30. Later on, the ferryman will kindly point out that we should've been here at 5:45 to see the sun come up, proving so with a nice shot he took on his phone. The yacht club is incredibly busy – vans and cars with trailers arrive constantly. Parents and kids unpack the gear and set up the boats with their bare, frozen hands! It's not until 11:00 that we get a well earned coffee and bacon bap from the spotless Ferry cafe. T's satisfied with her pictures but we carry on to The Kench, check out the Sinah Warren Hotel and stop by Northney Marina before we agree it's time to head home.

Dune protection at the yacht club

The ferry arrives from Eastney, Portsmouth

Dunes at Sinah Common

Bacon baps from the Ferry Cafe

Icy crust on the shoreline

The strange pool at Sinah Warren hotel

A winter visit to Hayling Island - day 1

T sets up a shot of a stripey beach hut

We visited Hayling Island last summer and enjoyed a wonderfully sunny day on our bikes. Now, in the midst of winter and a while since we last reached an island, we thought we'd pay it a winter visit. It was just as sunny as last time but so much colder. Photography was on T's mind, and a pressing deadline for Outdoor Photography magazine. Hayling Island didn't disappoint. Subject matter abounds from the Funland amusement park to the masses of beach huts, the quiet shingle shoreline to the busy yacht club. The manmade and the wild sit side-by-side with those exciting rough edges you find whenever you reach the margins of the country.

Rounded-up beach huts await their owners visit

South-side sea defences soak up the sun

A lonely groyne stares out to sea

T assesses a pink hut

The Beach Hut

Winter roller coaster

Night time Funland

Beachland amusements, Hayling Island

Hayling Island

Langstone Bridge

Hayling Island is set up perfectly for cycling. A quiet cycle route swept us through a tunnel of trees from Havant train station to Langstone Bridge - the crossing point to Hayling. The Hayling Billy track then follows the old railway line that used to carry my dad to his boyhood summer holidays on the island. The train stopped running in 1963, and now the route takes cyclists away from the traffic clogged road, along the west coast past a nature reserve, mudflats and rapeseed fields.

Rapeseed field near Newton

Lunch at the Sunset Cafe

An arrow-straight, tree-lined road brought us to the beach area. Where turf covered sand, studded with gorse, gives way to dusty car parks and pastel coloured beach huts. A seemingly endless bank of shingle runs in either direction before the sea. The Sunset Cafe provided a tasty lunch.

Shingle banks facing Portsmouth

Beach huts and esplanade terracing

Hayling Light Railway sits next to the fun fair

The fun fair feels like the centre of the island. Downwind, the sporadic roar of the rides is carried great distances. Up close, the sudden lack of space becomes suffocating. Hayling Light Railway offers an escape - the rusty rails meandering east beside the beach.

looking over to Wittering

The south-eastern shore offers greater tranquility despite the density of housing squeezed into every available nook.

Sand dunes by the sailing club

Leaving the southern shore, we followed the busy main road north before gratefully branching off to the peaceful country lanes of North Hayling, which perhaps provide a glimpse of the island my dad visited all those years ago.