Saturday 28th May
Yay, holiday!
This is a much-belated week away for my stepdad's 50th with his side of the family, after we were all meant to go to Spain in 2020. It's a two-hour drive down to the Bridport area, and we arrived in the town with a bit of time to spare before we could check into the cottage a few miles away, so stopped at a petrol station to get some Magnums and ate them there in the forecourt, haha. I made a mental note of the local independent farm shop and bakery opposite.
The cottage is lovely, part of an old farmhouse out in the winding single-track lanes near a village called West Milton. The building has three cottages: one for the owners, and two holiday rentals. It's chilly indoors, but outside there's a little terrace that catches the afternoon sun, and a lovely big garden area the other side of the drive that's just for our use. That'll be lovely to visit early in the morning when people aren't up yet, or at night to look at the stars. From one spot on the driveway you can even see the sea in the distance. I'm looking forward to trying the cider in the fridge, a complimentary bottle of local stuff from a farm up the road. I spent a few hours working on my final college assignment before dinner (and thankfully the house warms up once the heating comes on) then the six of us who have arrived so far enjoy dinner outside. I didn't like the cider, haha, but at least it won't go to waste with so many people here. Later I wander over to the garden and stroll through the adjoined meadow as dusk falls. I don't stay up late enough to see the stars fully out, but gaze at them for a few minutes through my window when I wake up in the middle of the night.
Sunday
Despite leaving the blinds of the roof windows open - there are no streetlights out here - it's not till an hour and a half after sunrise that I wake up. I'd like to leave the windows open more than they are, too, to hear the near-silence and birdsong of a country morning, but it's too cold.
Others are due to arrive in the afternoon so four of us set off in the morning on a 7.5-mile walk from the cottage around the local countryside. I noticed a couple of orchids - common spotted orchid and pyramidal orchid. Lots of long grass, stiles, and some steep hills. We stopped for a rest and lunch at a spot overlooking a road and a hedgelayer I follow on Instagram drove past in his shepherd's-hut van, haha. We had to shelter under a tree for a few minutes during a shower, but got back to the cottage just in time, five minutes before the rain really hit.
Too tired to do much in the afternoon. Cast Away was on telly so we watched that. Had chicken and ham with salad and warm crusty baguette for dinner. Weather cleared later on so I went out to the garden. Saw some bats, yay! No hedgehogs or foxes or owls, though.
Monday
Spent a few hours in West Bay. After an initial walk along the pier, I went off on my own and made my way to the Discovery Centre, which sadly was closed. But behind it is the fossil shop, which sells ones found by a local expert in nearby Charmouth, and I gave into temptation and bought one, hehe. Then I decided to go for a walk, up and along the East Cliffs. There are so many 'desire lines' worn into the steep slope up from the beach, criss-crossing all over it, I'm surprised there aren't any proper maintained steps, although there must be a reason for that I suppose. One day all the little paths up will be eroded down together and there won't be any turf left for a foothold.
I walked along to where the cliffs next slope down to the beach at Burton Freshwater. Only about a kilometre, 15 minutes or so, but there are a few steep hills to climb up and down. It's the third time I've been to West Bay and walked that short fragment of South West Coast Path in the last year, haha. Took my shoes off and went back along the beach. Spent too much time looking down at the pebbles for fossils! Had to make myself look up and around. It's gorgeous there. And I just love stopping to look up at the cliffs, impressively tall and awe-inspiring with all their layers, layers that give hints about the distant past if you take the time to notice. I picked up a small piece of rock from a pile of collapsed cliff; it really is just compacted sand, it didn't take much effort to crumble it up in my fingers. Blew my mind that it had been a solid cohesive chunk for like 175 million years. I wondered what the blue-grey rocks at the very bottom of the cliffs were, how they were formed and when, but apparently they're the same stuff as the rest of the rest of the 45+ metres above it. The particular type of sandstone there contains something that oxidises when exposed to air, turning the cliffs that golden-browny-yellow colour - the blue-grey rocks are relatively recently exposed and therefore still un-oxidised.
I had a lovely time there, thoroughly enjoyed those few hours. And to top it all off, several minutes after making myself stop scanning the pebbles for fossils, I stopped to look at the waves for a minute, then looked down... and saw a fossil! Hahaha! What luck! Nowhere near as impressive as the one I'd bought from the shop, but still cool, and very exciting. Another rock to add to my growing windowsill collection, haha.
Tuesday
Mapperton House and Gardens. Well, just the gardens really, the house (home to the Earl and Countess of Sandwich) is only viewable on scheduled guided tours. It's a gorgeous exterior though, an L-shaped 17th century Jacobean mansion made of the lovely warm golden-yellow local stone, with ancient wood-framed gates set into the low wall surrounding the house, enclosing a small square of manicured lawn and flower borders full to bursting. The gardens are reached through another gate along the side of the house, leading to a rectangular lawn and more flower borders along the boundary wall. It started to rain shortly after we arrived; the others took cover in a stone gazebo of sorts a little further along, while I happily stood underneath a mature tree and didn't mind the odd drop reaching me. After about ten minutes the rain passed and we continued into the formal Italianate gardens, terraced into the steep little valley the house sits of the edge of. It was pretty. Large areas were paved but it was old so plants were growing through the cracks. There were more flowers, and topiary, and trees and shrubs, and a fountain, and two rectangular ponds one of which is now used as a swimming pool.
I wandered off to explore the wooded part of the grounds for a while, then rejoined the others for lunch in the restaurant; the carrot and coriander soup was nice, but everything took quite a while to arrive.
The final two members of the party arrived late afternoon. After dinner we all sat in the living room and listened to everyone's favourite songs; there were 11 of us so it took a while, but was a nice way to spend the evening :)
Wednesday
Lyme Regis :) I went off on my own again. Decided to visit the museum, which I enjoyed. They had lots of info about Mary Anning and her contemporary fossil hunters, as well as lots of fossils, and other things on the history of the town. My favourite thing in there was the Cabinet of Curiosities. A History of Earth Time Line wraps around the four sides of the box; it contains our planet's history in a single calendar year, with 1cm representing 12.5 million years. You may have heard it before: when geological history is represented as a single year, Homo sapiens appear in the last few minutes of December 31st. It's mind-boggling. I quite like that we are, in this way, utterly insignificant. My favourite thing in the Cabinet of Curiosities were the small rock samples you could look at through hand lenses placed inside the glass. I was literally looking at them open-mouthed, going "Wow!" like a child, especially at the Oolitic Limestone - made up of tiny grains of calcium carbonate - and the tiny fossil of a freshwater snail in the Purbeck Marble.
After a couple of hours in the busy museum, I returned to the fresh air and sunshine and bought a honey and ginger ice-cream from a kiosk on the beachfront, and sat on the shingle to enjoy it. Then I made my way past the half-term crowds on the sandy beach over to Monmouth Beach on the other side of the Cobb. I wanted to see the fossil beach and Ammonite Pavement, a limestone ledge containing large ammonite fossils, but didn't realise how far down it was, so I didn't get to see it before having to turn back to meet my family to go back to the house. I did find, though, a tiny piece of crystal geode inside a rock that someone had broken open; most of it had been taken but the end had snapped off and been left behind. Fossil-hunting is encouraged there, to prevent many being lost to the sea, but there are guidelines. I'd like to go back one day, and go on a guided fossil-hunting walk.
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| Oolitic limestone viewed through a hand lens |
We had a dinner reservation at the restaurant at nearby Bredy Farm. It's a working farm that's diversified with a campsite and restaurant and events, etc. I had stayed there one night on the camping trip last year, and by complete coincidence it's where my grandad decided to book to stay in his campervan on this holiday, and where my stepbrother-in-law's dad works. On my camping trip we arrived there late at night so didn't get to see the restaurant - so I was expecting a casual woodfired pizza place... but no, it's a proper Italian restaurant with pricey dishes, and is so popular that you have to book weeks in advance. We sat outside and it was very rustic and pretty, with wooden tables decorated simply with white pillar candles and tankards filled with herbs and wildflowers, and to my delight there were swallows and house martins darting about to and from their nests on the old farm buildings, the yellow stone lit warmly by the sunset. The menu was puzzling though, with dish names largely in Italian so that the waiting staff are obliged to explain to probably every table what half the dishes are. And there were no carbs with most of them; there was just one pasta option, and that a spicy one. For carbs and the relatively low cost I ordered one of the woodfired pizzas with fennel salami on, which was nice. I also ordered a half-pint of one of their own ciders but didn't like it, haha, but that's just me, I'm very picky when it comes to alcohol. For dessert I had a rhubarb and strawberry crumble, which was yummy!
Thursday
I took my sister and stepbrother on a 7-mile walk along the coast path from Charmouth to West Bay. I did that section last summer on the camping trip with my friend and it's challenging with lots of steep hills, but that means the views are stunning. It was sunny and warm and we took it at a leisurely pace, pausind when we needed to, and thankfully there was a nice breeze. After about an hour and a half we reached Golden Cap, the highest point on the south coast, and lingered there a while taking in the views stretching down the coast, all the way to Portland in the east and - just visible in the haze - the headlands of Torbay and hills of Dartmoor in the west.
Less than an hour later we reached the just-over-halfway point of Seatown, where, as we were just about to head off again after a quick loo stop, a text message informed us the whole family was down there at the beach! So we went to find them and sat down for a while. We were quite conflicted, partly wanting to stay and enjoy a family day at the beach, but also feeling like we wanted to finish what we set out to do. So we stayed a while and then set off on the second half of the walk. The walk up the hill from Seatown was the steepest one yet.And at one point I looked up to see the path I was following fell off the edge of a cliff a short way ahead! Quickly moved left away from it, thankfully it was an open piece of land so another route had started to be worn into the grass. I don't remember seeing that cliff fall last year, with the fence literally hanging off the edge and still connected at both ends. We reached West Bay around 3pm, about 4 hours and 20 minutes after setting off in Charmouth, and sat down to enjoy some well-earned food! I finally got some fish'n'chips and Dorset apple cake :)
As the sun sets I go to sit outside on the terrace. After a while a white bird flies overhead from behind the house and I just assume it's a gull - until it glides low and continues into the orchard and over to the meadow. BARN OWL!!!!!! I've never seen a wild one. I stand up, jaw dropping, and quickly tiptoe over to the orchard where I sit down to keep watch. To my delight it does appear again, several times as it moves around the fields in the area, hunting. Interestingly it doesn't cross the middle of the meadow, but always flies around the edges - which meant it flew within ten metres of me a few times, which was wonderful. What an awesome experience :)
Friday
Three more of the party left in the morning. We would be dropping my sister off at Weymouth train station later in the afternoon so four of us went east to Abbotsbury Beach (part of Chesil Beach) to spend a few hours there before she left. It was quite busy and the people next to us had music on, which bothered me, so along with the uncertainty of what to do with myself that I always feel at the beach, I quickly grew restless and decided to go for a walk to see the nature reserve. Only it turned out you can't. The South West Coast Path turns inland, so after following that for a few minutes I turned around, wanting to stay near the sea especially in the warm, stuffy weather. I thought I might be able to walk along the beach so I could see the lagoon, but didn't want to risk it after seeing signs saying it was private land. So I sat down in an empty spot where I couldn't hear the people I could see, finished my book and watched and listened to the waves. The empty, lifeless, shingle bank stretching out into the distance looked very lunar, if that can be an acceptable description for a place by the sea, or like it belonged to some remote desert-bordered coastline. After being gone a couple of hours I rejoined my family, and we stayed about half an hour longer before leaving for Weymouth - and just in time too, for it started to rain shortly after we left.
The rest of us departed on Saturday morning.
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It was lovely to get away for a week to somewhere so gorgeous. I love it down there and really want to go back. I even bought an annual membership to the Lyme Regis Museum as it was just £1 more than a day ticket, haha, and I know I can get the Jurassic Coaster bus down there from Weymouth or Exmouth during the summer months. I do have a few adventures planned over the next few months to look forward to though, starting with North Yorkshire with my friend next month! :)