There are red warning signs at the end of Alum Bay New Road, the most westerly point of the Isle of Wight, where the tarmac meets a public footpath that winds its way along the cliff edge.
‘No unauthorised vehicles beyond this point,’ reads a notice fixed to a metal barrier, which protrudes halfway across the path.
Another sign, directing walkers to The Needles headland and Old Battery, a Victorian coastal defence site that’s now a National Trust attraction, points drivers to a designated car park further inland.
The footpath beyond the signage is exclusively reserved for dog-walkers, hikers and passengers on the ‘Needles Breezer’ bus, one of only a few vehicles permitted to whizz along the scenic trail.
On warm summer evenings like these, the spot is usually busy, full of tourists and locals who come to gaze over the breathtaking cliffs and gape at the famous Isle of Wight Needles, three stacks of gleaming chalk that rise spectacularly out of the sea.
But there were no such visitors on the path last Friday night.
For no-one saw the silver Ford Mondeo drive past the point of no return shortly after 7pm.
And no-one saw its driver, John King, his wife Lyn in the passenger seat, nor their two beloved dachshunds in the back, as they made their way along the private track.
John and Lyn King in an image posted on social media
It appears Lyn had been very unwell in the months before she died, with John caring for her
The emergency call, from a traumatised member of the public, came at 7.21pm.
Though no-one is reported to have seen the car plummet the 300ft off the cliff edge to the jagged rocks below, witnesses spotted its crumpled wreckage at the bottom, half-submerged in water, with its roof and bonnet both caved in by the impact.
Horrified, they watched as John, 67, a retired bus driver, was pulled from the vehicle and hauled ashore by first responders, who worked desperately to revive him – but to no avail.
Rescue teams – from the coastguard, police, fire brigade and ambulance service – then located Lyn, 66, and the bodies of their dogs, still inside the wrecked car.
The couple’s deaths, in this most dramatic and public manner, have sent shockwaves rippling across the island they called home.
‘Everyone that knew them is in total shock,’ said one grieving friend this week.
Though they had no children of their own, John and Lyn had several family members on the Isle of Wight, including siblings, nieces and nephews, as well as Lyn’s parents.
In a statement, their families said they were ‘devastated and numb from the loss’.
No-one is reported to have seen the car plummet the 300ft off the cliff edge to the rocks below
Witnesses spotted its crumpled wreckage at the bottom, half-submerged in water, with its roof and bonnet both caved in by the impact
And in the week since their deaths, questions have inevitably hung heavy in the air in the close-knit community around Alum Bay.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Police say an investigation is ongoing, with enquiries continuing to establish the full circumstances surrounding the incident.
On online community groups and forums, there were theories that it could have been a terrible accident, ranging from the car slipping on wet grass by the side of the footpath, to John trying to turn the vehicle around and losing control on the steep bank.
Some surmised they might have been trying to reach accessible parking bays nearer to the National Trust site. Others raged against the lack of barriers on the perilous clifftop path.
Former colleagues, however, came forward to confirm that John, who used to work for the island’s transport company Southern Vectis, once drove open-top buses to The Needles, so would have known that route well – and that cars weren’t allowed on it, meaning it was unlikely to have been a tragic wrong turn.
This week, the Mail visited the Isle of Wight and spoke to friends, neighbours and former colleagues of John and Lyn to build a clearer picture of the couple, who were, it seems, very much in love throughout their 45-year marriage.
Writing on Facebook in 2017, Lyn said: ‘Happy anniversary to my wonderful husband, and to thank him for the last 37 years. Where has the time gone? Love you more as the years have gone by.’
But while they may have been devoted to each other, it appears Lyn had been extremely unwell in the months before she died, with John caring for her.
Rescue teams pulled the two bodies from the wreckage
One local told the Mail that Lyn had been forced to leave her job, running a small newsagents’ kiosk in Havant, Hampshire, on the mainland, due to ill health, while neighbours spoke of her having been given a ‘terminal diagnosis’.
They described her as ‘a small, grey-haired lady’ and ‘quite elderly’ – appearing far beyond her 66 years.
Indeed, when shown a photograph she posted of herself on Facebook in 2018, with cropped, dark brown hair and glasses, locals didn’t recognise her as the same person.
Since moving to the area three years ago, she barely left the house, they said, and stayed in all day. When answering the door to visitors, she would only open it a crack and peer out.
‘I only heard she left work because she is not well,’ said Bobby Kaur, 43, who runs the newsagents today. ‘He [John] was her main carer.’
Like others, she did not know what condition Lyn suffered from but said things had got so bad that, just a few weeks ago, John and Lyn had lined up a friend, another bus driver, to take over looking after their dogs.
For a couple who loved their pets – an Instagram account John set up several years ago features doting photographs of dogs, including a dachshund called Otis, playing in the couple’s living room – it must have been a heartbreaking thing to contemplate.
But Ms Kaur says they could no longer cope with their care due to Lyn’s rapidly-declining health.
She was, Ms Kaur recalls, ‘a very nice lady, very happy girl, always talkative’. She remembered her fondly from the days she used to visit the newsagent as a customer.
John, she says, used to work in the bus station adjacent to the kiosk.
Meanwhile, a friend on the Isle of Wight, who did not want to be named, recalled the toll Lyn’s declining health appeared to be taking on her husband.
‘I used to see him in the supermarket all the time and we’d stop and talk,’ the friend said.
‘More recently, he didn’t want to talk. He seemed very down, he kept his head down and said nothing.
‘He didn’t even want to make eye contact.’
At the couple’s former home, bar a few strips of police tape sealing the front door, there is no sign that anything is amiss.
Two dog ornaments can still be seen in the front window.
One neighbour recalls John cutting the lawn at the back of the house last Wednesday – something she’d never seen him do.
Another remembers seeing him help Lyn, who was ‘finding it very difficult to walk’, to the car on Friday afternoon with the two dogs.
She didn’t realise that fleeting glimpse was the last she – or indeed anyone – would see of the couple, but she noted Lyn was ‘really, really frail’, hunched over in apparent pain as she made her way to the car, parked outside the couple’s rented terrace in Cowes between 4pm and 4.45pm.
That in itself was unusual, as locals said they had never seen John take his wife and dogs out for a drive in the three years they’d lived at that address.
Another neighbour voiced what many had been thinking since the news broke last weekend.
‘I think we are all assuming what happened was him doing the right thing by his wife,’ he said.
Yet others weren’t so sure.
‘I find it really hard to believe that John would do something like that,’ one said, referring to speculation that he may have driven off the cliff intentionally.
‘Having said that, I don’t know why he was there.’
But others remember John from happier times.
Neighbours recall seeing him coming and going, to work or the shops, in his ‘well cared-for’ silver Mondeo on the residential street in Cowes.
Another remembers John stroking his dogs as he walked past, and apologising about his own dogs’ noise. He heard them last Friday morning, barking for their breakfast.
Dogs, says Kevin Parsons, 70, a retired bus driver who worked with John for three years at the Stagecoach Winchester depot a decade ago, were his old friend’s ‘absolute passion’.
‘They were both devoted to their dogs,’ he told the Mail.
‘We always used to joke because he was a very big, tall man, but he had the smallest dogs in history.
‘No matter what you were talking [about], if you were onto his dogs, look out – he absolutely adored the things.’
Mr Parsons, from Eastleigh in Hampshire, says John ‘was a true bus driver, so good with everyone he met.
‘He was always ready for a joke, and always a keen team player. It didn’t matter what or where it was, John would volunteer.’
Having moved to the island around 2022, John took a job at Southern Vectis, the 100-year-old bus company which runs the Needles Breezer and other local services, as a network driver.
Mr Parsons says that although John was always a competent driver, he had to take 12 months off work a few years ago after he had a heart attack.
Fully recovered and back in the driver’s seat, he left the wheel for good earlier this year, no doubt ready to embark on that long-awaited retirement.
It was Lyn who had links to the Isle of Wight; her mother was born here, though she grew up in Derbyshire.
The couple had met and married in the Midlands, but then moved South and lived in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, then Southsea, Portsmouth, before returning to the island.
The path to The Needles was as busy as ever this week, with an adjacent theme park, and access to the beach – via the historic chair lift – reopened just hours after the tragedy.
At sea level, the Kings’ car had been removed from the water by specialist teams. Up on the grassy banks of the cliff edge, there was no sign that it had ever gone over the edge.
Standing atop the windswept precipice on a clear summer’s evening, one can only imagine the horror of their final moments as they crashed towards the churning ocean below.
In death, at least, as in life, they had one another – and the dogs they doted on – by their side.
- Additional reporting: Lowri Lewis
