David Burdett on Rivers

Island Harbour was a very nice – my wife and I loved living there, it was out in the countryside. She’s an avid supporter of the Royal Society of Protection (RSPB) of birds and also an Ornithologist, so she counted 54 species of birds in the area around the Marina because you’ve got the countryside birds, but you’ve also got the birds from the creeks, the freshwater birds and then you’ve got the saltwater birds from the river. It was almost the perfect place to do birdwatching.

At the time, the ‘Medway Queen’ fell into further disrepair but the ‘Ryde Queen’ was developed and for one year, Trust House Forte took on the franchise and ran it as a ‘boatel’. And my parents visited from where they were living in Lancing and other friends stayed there.

It was an ideal situation but presumably there wasn’t enough profit margin because Trust House Forte didn’t renew that franchise but before that it was a nightclub, they had a discotheque there, so there was quite a lot of traffic up and down that road, but apart from that, it didn’t really disturb us. It was a delightful place to live.