It seems as though things are slipping away from us. And by things I mean large bits of the Isle of Wight.

The huge landslip at Bonchurch has shocked and saddened many. With other slips at Shorwell, Luccombe, and now the Military Road, it has been a season for land movement that has been memorable to say the least.

Anyone with more than a few year's experience of the Island will know that landslips are a fact of life.

Whilst the extra rainfall caused by our changing climate can speed things up, all of these slips were sooner or later going to happen. And they are not new.

Consider the immense landslide at Blackgang in 1928 that cut off Chale from Niton. Or the lost fishing village of Luccombe, now no longer accessible from the landward side at all. 

Even the beloved and now profoundly changed landscape of Bonchurch Landslip was formed - as the name makes very plain - from such an event. This ephemerality is part of the beauty and mystery of the Island's landscape. Whilst many of us are content to live with that, some are not.

Discussions after any landslip event inevitably turn to restoration, and engineering challenges.

Indeed, sometimes this is appropriate. Few would suggest that the road from Newport to Shorwell should have been left closed this winter. It was no small job to clear it, but it was reopened, and with limited risk of a recurrence, this seems prudent.

Coastal landslips though, are different, because of their inevitability. I recall working on plans for the road over Afton Down back in the early 2000s. The discussions then, as now, centred around whether the road could be kept, moved inland, or abandoned.

As it turned out, an engineering solution allowed it to be kept - although at the cost of a substantial structure hidden underneath it, which will one day inevitably be exposed as the cliff falls away. When that unattractive structure is revealed, and we can no longer get the benefit of driving over it, we may question the wisdom of that decision.

A more serious consequence of our inability to accept this process is an ongoing waste of our money.

I am talking here about the Undercliff Drive.

Closed by a landslide in 2014, this scenic drive has been maintained as an 'A' road ever since, despite it leading nowhere. A few years ago the white lines and catseyes were even renewed.

Nobody has had the courage to admit that the road is no longer a road, but an access drive for a few residents; and a potential to be a delightful walk or ride for visitors.

A fraction of the cost of the maintenance of that road would enable us to turn it into a linear country park with easy car access at both ends.

If we can close libraries, play areas and youth centres that are desperately needed, how about we close a road that isn't?