We drove down Saturday afternoon, and went straight to the campsite to get the tent up before dark. My first time camping! (I don't really count the night in a pop-up tent at a folk festival several years ago.) We stayed at the small adults-only Hobby Farm Camping, near Whitchurch Canonicorum, which is actually where my friends' ancestors lived a couple of centuries ago before coming east to work on the railway. Some of the "villages" in the area aren't villages in the sense that I'm used to, they're only called so because they have a church and a pub. Few have shops, and they're made up of cottages and houses and farms dotted here and there along stretches of single track lanes which twist and turn and do an awful lot of winding through the hills and hedgerows. Most houses are made from the local warm-coloured sandstone, so they're all very pretty.
The campsite was a field with a pretty little pond, and we parked ourselves at one end under a couple of lovely big oaks. There were two fairly new sheds at the opposite end, one containing a loo and washbasin, the other a shower, both really decent and clean. Despite my never having put up a tent before, two of us managed to do it relatively quickly, while the third took the dogs for a walk in the adjacent field to keep them from getting in the way. For dinner we originally tried the Shave Cross Inn, a pretty place with a flower-filled beer garden we glimpsed through the gate in the wall - but that was closed. Luckily, a local couple pulled into the car park at the same time, hoping to have dinner there as well, and they suggested another place we could try. So we made our way to the White Lion Inn in Broadwindsor, another gorgeous chocolate box village. We were glad the first one had been closed, because this one was really nice, the food was good and really reasonably priced (like, below average price: just under £10 for my main). We were all tired and got comfort food - for me it was steak and kidney suet pudding, with new potatoes and fresh veggies - and we shared a sticky toffee pudding with custard for dessert :) All yummy =]
My first night of camping was fine; of course it wasn't the most comfortable night's sleep I've had but it wasn't too bad, it didn't rain and I didn't get chilly or too hot. It was really nice waking up early on a sunny summer day in the countryside - peace and quiet, no noise except birdsong and cattle. Well, mostly. We were all woken up at about 6am when a pheasant in a nearby field called out, just once, causing the two cocker spaniels to be instantly fully awake and alert and wanting to get out of the tent. My friends managed to get them to settle down and drift off to sleep again fairly quickly, but the pheasant called again ten minutes later, and about ten minutes after that, and so on and so on, and the dogs kept getting up then drifting off again, etc. We got up eventually, and in our PJs walked up the hill in the next field, which provided a lovely view over the green, peaceful countryside for miles and miles :)
The main reason we went to Dorset was to go to a little event on the Sunday; the three of us are all interested in cohousing, community living, eco-friendly and sustainable living, etc., and a group called Bridport Cohousing were running a small, informal meet-and-chat thing. They're in the process of developing a new cohousing neighbourhood and the event was for people interested in the project to come along, meet the members, and find out more. I originally wrote more detail about this but it became an exceedingly long essay which could easily be separated into two, so that will be my next post! The meetup was held at the Symondsbury Estate, an old manor and farm that's been converted into a wedding venue, cafe-restaurant, village shop, a few other retail units, and a couple of holiday cottages. Lovely, charming place! We sat outside at the cafe with some of the group's members; they were lovely and friendly, it was great to meet some like-minded people, and I thought the project sounded amazing. I treated myself to a glass of the estate's homemade apple juice, and a slice of pistachio, almond and lemon tray bake, which had a lovely moist and nutty texture but sadly didn't have much flavour at all :(
Afterwards, we took the dogs for a walk up to the nearby Colmer's Hill, which towered above the surrounding area. The path to get there passed through some more of the estate. There was a gorgeous little holiday-rental double-size shepherds hut that all of us exclaimed about and would absolutely love to live in - it was just the size of a Tiny House. There was an area with ever so pretty wildflowers, and a young cherry tree with the most glorious, luscious, shining, deep-red fruit on. There were also a few enclosures with sheep, goats, and pigs! Closer to the hill, we saw a really cute "hobbit house", a lovely little whitewashed thatched cottage nestled on the edge of a little woodland at the foot of a hill, which, again, each of us would love to live in.
Colmer's Hill was a little bit of a steep climb but I enjoyed the exercise and the 360-degree views from the top were great. It was getting a little hazy in the distance, we couldn't tell if it was sea fog rolling in or light rain, but you could see for many miles. We stayed up there for a short rest - the breeze was so nice! - then headed back down again to get a roast for a late lunch at the pub down the road. Sadly the food wasn't as nice as it had been at the place we'd got dinner the night before, but oh well. After that we said goodbye to pretty Symondsbury and drove back to the campsite to pack up. I had to sit in a camping chair which had the dogs' leads tied around its feet, so that they couldn't run around and get in the way of my friends dismantling the tent, but thankfully they were quite tired and laid or pottered around peaceably; I don't think my light weight would have held them if they'd decided to go charging around, haha!
After leaving the campsite, we went to nearby Seatown, thinking a nice walk along the beach would be good. Unfortunately dogs aren't allowed on the beach during summer, so we just took them up the hill behind it and into a little meadow to run around, then after a while back down to the Anchor Inn, where we sat outside on the low clifftop with a drink and a sandwich to last us till we got home (it was nearly four hours after lunch by this time). It was so beautiful - mostly clear skies, warm sunshine, pebbly beach, cliffs, grassy hills, gorgeous calm blue sea...
Needless to say, we didn't want to leave, but at about 7:30pm we had to, as it was a couple of hours at least back to Southampton. It had been such a lovely weekend, but it did highlight to all of us our dissatisfaction with our current urban environments, and craving for something different. One of my friends said that perhaps part of why we were so sad at leaving was because we don't really believe that going back there in the context we'd like to - as members and future residents of the cohousing group - is possible for us right now. But I'll talk about that, for me at least, in my next post.
But anyway, it was still a really nice weekend, in a beautiful part of the country I haven't been to before, in good weather, with great company and two happy doggies :)
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