STYLE | Feature


TRIBE AND TIDE


NAVIGATING ISLAND FAMILY LIFE


By Emma Elobeid Pictures Megan Clarke


As the days cool in barely perceptible increments, our routine gains in welcome predictability what it loses in summer fluidity. By early September, we’re more than ready to lower the anchors and stick a little closer to home. For us, that can only mean one place


O 44 styleofwight.co.uk


n golden September evenings and crisp October mornings - when the wind whips the salty scent of the tidal mud flats all the way


up the Gaggen Path and through the village to our front door - St. Helens Duver summons us.


This could quite easily be an Ode to the Duver in all its kite-flying, hide- and-seeking glory; a place where the boys bound about like over-excited Labradors. Somewhat neglected (by us at least) in favour of the beach during the height of summer, the Duver really comes back into our lives once we pass the ‘flip-flops-in-the- porch-no-more’ litmus test of Autumn.


When the colours of the Gorse bushes change from ‘geen’ to ‘lellow’ (peppered now with patches of purple Autumn Squill) we reacquaint ourselves with its landscape. Home to characters both real and imagined – from red squirrels to stickmen, dormice to dragons – the Duver exudes a childhood magic, helped along by the fairy door that has been painted into the trunk of an old lightning-struck tree.


But for the boys, there is one Autumn activity that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Watching carefully for signs of readiness using their own in-built blackberry barometers, we descend at first red-


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