A Family Walk From Sandown to Shanklin (With Bribes)

"How much further is it to the arcades?"

It's always hard to guess quite how far my children are willing to walk without making excessive fuss.

As previously discussed, we have found that Treasure Trails are effective at convincing them that they aren't really on a walk at all. It's also key to be realistic and stick to one of our short walks for children rather than a more ambitious walk.

We have completed nearly all of the Treasure Trails on the Isle of Wight, so we have now moved onto an incentives programme to get the children walking.

​Starting from Sandown

This week's bribe-laden walk was from Sandown to Shanklin along the sea wall.

We parked in the pay and display spaces near to Sandown Pier. I'm not a fan of paying to park but decided to cough up so that the children's energy wasn't expired before the walk even started. My eye twitched a few times as I paid the £6.30 fee for four hours in October. My mum arrived separately and parked for free about five minutes away (see our free parking guide for ideas).

We parked in the spaces to the right of Sandown Pier

We then headed towards Shanklin, which is about 1.5 miles away (or two miles if you want to get to the Shanklin Chine end of the esplanade). 

Both the sun and tide was out, so we walked along the beach. This was a real joy after a couple of grey and wet days. 

The alternative is to walk along the sea wall, which is is flat and easy all the way and is suitable for pushchairs and wheelchairs. Some sections of the tarmac are very worn so it would be too bumpy for a scooter, and might be a bit hard going in a manual wheelchair. I also wouldn't attempt it with rollerblades, ankle warmers and a ghetto blaster over your shoulder for similar reasons (and because you'd look like you'd visited the wrong beach).

The other thing to mention about the sea wall from Sandown to Shanklin is that it doesn't have any railings and there's a notable drop. Some parents seem able to relax on this sort of walk, but if our children had been younger then Mrs Guru would have said "stay away from the edge" at least 37 times.

It looks a little gloomy here, but it really was a sunny day

The first Bribe in Shanklin

I had sold this outing as a "trip to the arcades" and hadn't really mentioned that I would be parking two miles away. 

Thankfully, a combination of good weather and the thought of arcade games kept them going. We ate our packed lunch on one of Shanklin's many benches, bought a couple of coffees and headed to the arcade.

Shanklin's Summer Arcade is our favourite on the Isle of Wight, as it has a constantly improving range of machines. I am expecting to receive a letter from the owner one day thanking me for paying off their mortgage.

I have a strict policy and strategy at Shanklin's arcade.

The budget is £20, which usually lasts us about an hour, allowing for time spent arguing, dithering and for speeches about how much we would have loved to do this when we were children.

The rule is that each person in the family - starting with the youngest - gets a choice of machine until the money runs out. We then cash in our collection of yellow tokens and take home some piece of plastic tat. 

To add a further frisson to the occasion, the grandparents were joining us for the first time. They had previously ducked out of arcade trips but finally relented.

We spent a happy hour in the arcade throwing balls at clowns, rolling balls to make horses move, whacking giant balls against giant spiders, driving cars, failing to win a Squishmallow on the grabbers and playing a giant piano. My mum's husband concluded that it was "better than expected" whilst refusing to explain how high or low his expectations had been.

We accumulated about 400 tokens with our £20. Back in the day, you could spend these in the shop next door, with 400 tokens being worth £4. Nowadays, you have to choose from the selection in the arcade and it doesn't go quite as far.

Luckily, I had been hoarding tokens and found several faded vouchers in my wallet.

Once we added it all together, we had more than 1500 tokens. The moment I revealed this huge figure provoked a similar reaction as if I had told the children that we were skipping school and going to Walt Disney World Florida.

As the children began to plan their spending I spotted that some of these vouchers had actually expired in 2020. There was then a rather tense few minutes before the staff generously offered to accept my vouchers. I think they saw the fear in my eyes.

Arcade-fanatics will know that this photo was taken a couple of years ago (before the tickets shrunk)

"It's a meeeeee! Mario!"

Back to Sandown for the second bribe

We left the arcade with fake Tamagotchis and real lollipops to begin our walk back to Sandown. The tide had come in, so we walked along the sea wall instead. 

After another mile or so we reached Hinks Pioneer Café for an ice cream. Honestly, the children probably didn't need this second bribe but I fancied an ice cream and was able to pass it off as me being a generous parent.

After the children had chosen their ice creams (raspberry ripple) I then casually said something like "oh go on then, you've twisted my arm" and ordered a scoop of chocolate cookie dough for myself. This gave the impression that it was a spontaneous decision, rather than something I had been thinking about since we left the arcade.

The sun was continuing to shine, so we sat and enjoyed our ice creams before completing the last ten minutes of walking back to the car.

"How much further is it to the ice cream?"