That's the great thing about the Island - there's always so much going on. In the last 5 days we've been working on saltmarsh restoration, poems at bus stops, underwater snorkelling guidebooks, saving turtle doves, school assemblies, owl pellets, and of course The Big Draw in East Cowes (and fabulous it was too)!
And another one: Not-the-end-of-the-Pier, an excellent lottery-funded project, spearheaded by the Yarmouth Harbour Commissioners, to restore Britain's longest wooden Pier (another Island trophy) and to celebrate its place in the life and times of that historic town. We're doing all the community outreach work- talking and listening to local people tell us their stories of the Pier, in the war, in the big storms, when they were at school (and for that matter while they're at school as we're working with all of Yarmouth Primary too); everything from the biggest fish ever caught there to tales of the great ocean-going steamers. It's great stuff and will all be gathered up in a New Pier Archive and a book too, all by the end of 2008.
There's major engineering going on at the same time - the replacement of 52 of the wooden piles that support the deck of the pier. This is a huge job and should be pretty impressive while its going on. The amazing thing is that these huge timbers need replacing solely because a very, very tiny creature gets hungry. THE GRIBBLE ! a little thing that looks like a woodlouse (it's a marine isopod) and just eats sea-defences and piers around the world. Despite its being something of a nemesis we've grown rather fond of it and even made a model for the children at Yarmouth School. They named it Nibbler, of course!
Ian Boyd, Island 2000. Isle of Wight Ambassador.