At the top of Shanklin's Old Village, where the High Street of thatched cottages and tea gardens gathers to a point, stands the Crab Inn, a thatched pub with a stone fountain beside it. The stone commemorates Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the American poet, who stayed here in July 1868 on his last visit to Europe and left a verse on it. The Old Village is the postcard end of Shanklin: low thatched roofs, gift shops, cafés, tables set out under the eaves. It sits on higher ground inland, and the cliffs drop away behind it to the seafront.
The drop is the Chine. Shanklin Chine is a wooded ravine, just over 400 metres long, falling 32 metres from the Old Village down to the beach, with a waterfall and spring lines seeping from the cliffs. William Colenutt cut the present path and opened it to the public in 1817; admission was sixpence in 1873 and stayed sixpence until 1958. It is the Island's oldest tourist attraction, and in summer it is lit in the evenings. John Keats lodged nearby at Eglantine Cottage in 1819 and called it "a very great Lion." Jane Austen, Darwin, George Eliot and Dickens all came to look.
At the bottom of the Chine, sitting directly on the sand, is the Fisherman's Cottage, a thatched pub built into the base of the cliff in the early nineteenth century. Walkers on the Isle of Wight Coastal Path pass it before climbing steeply up Appley Steps and on towards Ventnor, through the woods of the Bonchurch Landslips. The Chine was a smugglers' route, and a tunnel is said to have run from it to the Chine Inn.
The beach runs the length of Sandown Bay, long and sandy, with an esplanade of hotels, restaurants and seafront cafés below the cliffs. A cliff lift, summer only, saves you the climb. Sandown is a couple of miles north; Ventnor, the sheltered "English Mediterranean," about four miles south, with its botanic garden.
St Blasius, the old church, keeps its bell ropes hanging down into the nave so the ringers can be seen by the congregation. It has a medieval core, a good Renaissance oak chest brought from elsewhere, and an 1874 organ by Forster and Andrews. The parish registers begin in 1717. The lych-gate, with its clock and bell, is a memorial to Mr White-Popham.
The Chine has a quieter history too. During the war, 40 Royal Marine Commando trained here before the 1942 Dieppe Raid, and Operation PLUTO ran a fuel pipeline through it to supply the Normandy landings. About sixty-five yards of that pipe are still on site.
Shanklin Pier once ran 1,200 feet out from the front, host to Paul Robeson and Anna Pavlova, until the Great Storm of October 1987 tore it apart; it was demolished and never rebuilt. Trains still come, though, terminating at Shanklin station, which has been the end of the line since the Ventnor section closed in 1966. The name means "the bank by the drinking-cup" — a reference, all along, to the Chine.