CHINES VISITOR SURVEY
VISITORS WANT MORE INFORMATION

Thank you to everyone who took part in our visitor survey which was carried out in September by Chris Ives, a volunteer with the AONB Project. '

Chris carried out his questionnaire survey over a few days, including weekends and evenings, to cover a good range of people from tourists visiting the Island to people who live here. He covered three car parks along the "back of the Wight" - Brook Chine, Chilton Chine and Whale Chine. We were particularly interested in people's feelings about the landscape along the Military Road, their awareness of designations such as AONB and Heritage Coast which cover that part of the Island and also their understanding of what chines were and of their significance as a landscape feature of the Isle of Wight.

Chilton Chine

His results show that people found local, mostly arable landscape, very attractive and that most people would be keen to know more about what chines are, how they are formed and their history, geology and ecology. We hope to follow this up by providing more on-site information in the Council car parks along the Military Road. We are also planning to tackle some of the problems of litter and rubbish in the chines as part of National Spring Clean Week in April 1997. Interestingly, when asked what they did not like about the landscape, most people said it was the amount of traffic - even though they had all arrived by private car themselves!

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