Camping is back at Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park...sort of! 

In 2022, we wrote a blog about the end of camping at the popular resort...before we discovered that it has started again, albeit with limited dates and no electric hook-ups.

The good news is that camping at Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park can be a real billy bargain if you're looking for a very cheap way to visit the Isle of Wight in 2023.

The camping on offer at Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park in 2023 is only available during July and August.

When we checked, it was available from July 1st but seemed to be unavailable for the last week of the school summer holidays in August 2023. 

A week was showing as £240 for up to six people on a 10m x 8m pitch. The pitch doesn't have an electric hookup, but it does have a toilet and shower block nearby.

Firstly, that price of £240 is competitive for camping in August for a family of six. That works out as £5.71 per person, per night if there are six of you. To put it on context, that's about the same as a tub of Lurpak...

Our guide to the Isle of Wight's 20 best campsites found that similar resorts run by Parkdean Resorts charge between £266 (Thorness Bay) and £497 (Nodes Point) for the same dates in August 2023. Admittedly, that price includes an electric hookup. I personally put Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park on a par with Nodes Point Holiday Park based on reviews and location. Reviews for Thorness Bay Holiday Park are slightly lower than the other two mentioned.

Secondly, Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park has a decent range of permanent facilities and summertime activities which are included in the price. There are indoor and outdoor swimming pools, which you will be able to use for free as well as things like outdoor cinema, a playground and minigolf. 

Thirdly, you can get a very good discount on the Isle of Wight ferry if you ask Away Resorts to book it for you when booking your camping. We searched for a return crossing with Wightlink in August 2023 and were quoted £259 on Wightlink's website or £84.46 on the Away Resorts website. That's a saving of £175! The difference won't always be as much as that, but that's a considerable saving thanks for a £240 holiday.

You might, but you don't have to.

The beach is very good so if the sun is shining you will spend a lot of time there.

The Isle of Wight also have quite a lot to do for free and some cheap places to eat out.

Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park is in the East Wight, so I would fill your time with free or cheap activities including:

• rockpooling at Bembridge beach at low tide
• a visit to the RNLI lifeboat station in Bembridge 
• the playgrounds on Appley esplanade and Puckpool Park in Ryde or the seafront playground in Sandham Gardens in Yaverland
• the Isle of Wight Bus Museum, if it's raining and you want something free!
• climbing up to the top of Bembridge Windmill, which is free if you have National Trust membership.
• a circular walk around St Helens, Priory Bay and Culver Down (see our 10 best walks guide) or a shorter walk along Appley esplanade.
• the dinosaur museum in Yaverland called Dinosaur Isle which is only about £6 entry

And make sure you check out our popular guide to free parking on the Isle of Wight!

People are overrated, aren’t they? They’re always blathering on about this and that when you’d rather just have a quiet sit down and a chance to listen to the waves lapping on the shore.

Sometimes you need a beach without loads of people. Sandown, Shanklin, Ryde, Ventnor and Colwell are unlikely to offer you that unless it’s 3am on a wet Wednesday in November.

Here are some of our favourite spots for avoiding people on an Isle of Wight beach holiday. Apologies in advance if this page leads to a mass influx of visitors to previously quiet locations but I think that's unlikely.

If you've got your own favourites, please share them in the comments.

To be fair, most of the Isle of Wight’s South West coast is as empty as it is beautiful. However, some beaches are easier to access than others.

Chilton Chine has a small car park next door to Isle of Wight Pearl on the Military Road. You clamber down a few steps and then you’ve got a pleasant stretch of beach which is sort-of-sandy and sort-of-stony. If you look carefully, you might discover an enormous dinosaur bone and become world famous. Or more likely, you won’t.

Whale Chine on the same coastline used to be a favourite of ours before the steps disappeared and the council were forced to block it off and put up enormous red signs saying things like “DANGER OF DEATH”. I do wonder whether the phrase "danger of death" helps the Island’s tourist industry, but I’ll let that one go.

Gurnard and Cowes beach both get pretty busy on a sunny day, but we usually head for the ‘hidden’ beach in Gurnard which is quieter although not completely empty.

I'm not sure if it's got an official name but we've always called it Robert's Beach.

Take the footpath round the back of Gurnard’s sailing club and you get to a rocky and sandy-ish beach. You can park quite nearby with this one, which is a bonus.

I did swim there on our last visit but the tranquillity and peace was destroyed when I stood on a jagged rock under the water.

​The Hanover Point end of Compton Bay is not a good choice for avoiding people on a busy day. The car park overflows, the ice cream van has a queue like Primark after lockdown ended and there’s an awkward back and forth as you work out whose turn it is to use the steps.

However, if you love that stretch of beach and want to avoid people as much as possible then it is much quieter at the far end. Park at the Compton Farm car park, walk through a field and climb down the steep steps with the gorgeous views down the coastline. The steps are a bit hairy if you’re also carrying three bodyboards, a windbreak and a picnic bag.

Most of the South Wight’s beaches are quiet, apart from Ventnor and Steephill Cove.

Binnel Bay is a rocky beach which we’ve had to ourselves before.

When I say that it's rocky, I don't mean it has that tiny shingle which you can sink into. I mean that it has massive great rocks which will poke you in the bottom. Top tip: find a rock with a similar indent to your buttocks for maximum comfort.

Click on the image below and you can have a look around, although this is a bit further along from the bit we have visited.

Orchard Bay in the South Wight gained a bit of local attention about 20 years ago when it turned out it was the landing spot for a massive drug smuggling operation. 

For a while, you couldn't access it because the steps had given way. Thankfully, the St Lawrence Community Association and the landowners worked hard to get the steps re-opened. Three cheers for nice people doing a nice thing!

​Here's a virtual tour thing from On The Wight:

Woodside Bay is hard to access unless you're staying at Woodside Coastal Retreat and Woodside Bay Lodge Retreat. The bay gets used by residents at the holiday parks but it's a long stretch of beach, so it isn't terribly busy.

It's shingly with the occasional patch of sand(ish) and is a bit too stony and seaweedy for swimming. However, it's facing the right way for sunsets. My mother told me 'it has a Robinson Crusoe quality about it' but I didn't see a single cannibal when I was there.

It's also right by the spot where Bob Dylan headlined the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival.

Now, this one’s a bit specialist but if you’ve got a kayak and know what you're doing, you can make your way round from Freshwater Bay to Watcombe Bay.

The only other way to access it is by abseiling down from the cliffs so you aren't likely to find many other visitors there.

We visited as part of a trip out with Isle of Wight Adventure Activities so there's a chance that a whole school party will turn up just as you get settled in. There are also some caves which you can explore but I'd caution against doing that unless you are with a guide. Otherwise you'll probably end up as part of a cautionary tale used by the RNLI when they train their coastguards.

I'm adding Atherfield Bay, after a visit in Summer 2022 in which I saw literally nobody else. It was glorious (thanks to Lisenka, who commented on this page when we first wrote this guide in 2020).

​My visit was at 7am, but I doubt it ever gets very busy. 

There are two or three parking spaces on the road and then you walk down a footpath for about five minutes. It was very easy when I did it, though it probably gets muddy in winter.

The beach itself is shingly with crumbly cliffs and long views going up the coast. If you walk south, you'll reach Whale Chine which has even higher cliffs.