A Guide To England's South-Central Region
[With the images below, click to view the full-size version in your browser, or right-click to download it to your desktop; from there you can right-click on the photo filename in Windows Explorer and select "Set As Desktop Background", choosing a customisation option such as "Fit"or "Fill"]
Christchurch
Bowling Green In The Sun
[click to view,
right-click to download full-size version]
Being able to get out and sit in the sun in late April or early May, when the warm weather
finally returns after the last of winter's gales, must be the quietest of all annual rituals,
perhaps more appreciated with each passing year. Here, Christchurch's bowling green, now
part of the Kings Arms Hotel opposite the castle ruins, provides a peaceful venue.
Salisbury from Laverstock Hill
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This view shows one of the ancient tracks to the pilgrimage centre of Salisbury, in this
case from Laverstock Hill just to the east. Salisbury has just been given a clean bill of
health exactly a year on after the assassination by Moscow agents of a Russian defector staying
there. The use of the deadly aerosol poison Novichok meant that swathes of the town had to
be decontaminated, by hundreds of military and police in hazmat suits over a period of months.
It was declared safe and open for business again (tourism numbers had gone down) on March
4, 2019. The town has a variety of attractions beside the Cathedral whose spire is visible
here, as does the surrounding area, covered in our orientation guide to the Avon Valley,
here.
Bournemouth
Beach In Off-Season
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The news has reported that a travel-firm survey indicates Bournemouth is the most 'Instagrammed' or ‘Instagram-worthy’ beach in Britain. (It's documented by ramking hashtags on the Instagram photo-sharing site.) Of course, the beach is also packed at that time of year, especially in late August when the 4-day airshow brings 900,000 more people to the seafront, and the late August bank holiday weekend provides a last chance for summer-hols seaside visits for daytrippers and staycationers. But come September, the holidays are over, the kids go back to school, and the beach is clear once again, to be enjoyed for bracing walks - till next summer.
Throop
Heritage Village
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Bournemouth
Council has secretly developed plans to turn part of a Conservation Site it owns into a “a
large commercial 'community farm'” which will also become “a major entrance to the proposed
Stour Valley Park, alongside Hengistbury Head and Kingston Lacy at either end,” that will
“include a working farm for visitors, a community garden, river walks, wildlife watching
and exercise activities.” The revelation of this in the local press has prompted local residents
to form Throop
Village Conservation Group in protest. Throop village is on the northern outskirts of
the modern conurbation, on the banks of the River Stour, with meadows on the northern side
[pictured here], between it and the airport. The HQ for this development will be Hicks Farm,
“home to the largest cluster of listed buildings within the Borough,” in what was the now-subsumed
hamlet of Muccleshell. The Council’s argument is that the commercial development is necessary
because ... they themselve have neglected Hicks Farm. The farm takes its name from the Hicks
family, whose own story is told in a pioneer journal documented on another of our web pages,
here , along
with a gallery page, here
. As this journal reflecting the life of the early residents when Bournemouth was still called
'Bourne' shows, there is more to 'heritage' than commercial development of its last surviving
unspoilt corner as a tourism attraction.
Studland
Heath
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
With the longest
heatwave since 1976 continuing (daytime high currently 27C), England's heathland has been
under threat from brushfires. Studland Heath on the Isle of Purbeck has been in the news,
its Nature Reserve identified as the most biodiverse place in the UK, with 44 of the 58 species
of mammals found in Britain, all six native British reptiles, plus some rare birds. This
surviving 10km-wide corner of a once-extensive Dorset heathland memorialised by Thomas Hardy
is now maintained by the National Trust. In the image above, you see the sandy path leading
inland from Studland's dune formations, the gorse-covered heath beneath occasional rock outcrops
beyond, and the sparse tree cover.
In the 2nd image [also downloadable fullsize], you can see the lowland heath's situation
in this shot from the Purbeck Hills, as the farthest reach of the peninsula just before the
Studland Ferry from Sandbanks peninsula. Visible in the distance, left, is Poole Harbour,
with bird sanctuaries on its near shore, wooded Brownsea Island (home to the rare British
red squirrel) in its midst, and to the right, Poole Bay with Bournemouth seafront. Just out
of sight on the near shore is Studland's own beachfront, now run by the NT as a nudist beach.
Bournemouth
Square cafe
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Next year,
Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch are to merge as a single council or unitary authority.
This being the region's largest population centre, the conurbation offers a considerable
range of public amenities, which is our interest here (rather than the politics of which
existing Council is the most / least useless or corrupt). Recently, Bournemouth has been
promoting itself as a 'hub' for the relatively new 'digital creative' market using the [borrowed]
moniker Silicon Beach. In furtherance of this aim, we have a set of webpage guides up [10
pages so far] on our sister site. These mainly focus on a particular neighbourhood with potential
to be a local 'hub' in its own right, from downtown Poole through Westbourne to central Christchurch.
The pages are orientation guides to public amenities such as cafes and restaurants - so you
don't have to be a 'digital creative' type to find them useful. For our keynote image here,
we've chosen Bournemouth Square's centrepiece cafe, but all the pages are illustrated. The
table-of-contents page for our 'Silicon Beach Bomo' section is here.
Sea
View Cafe x 2
[hover mouse over image to see 2nd photo]
After a prolonged
winter (the groundhog's 2 Feb prediction of 6 more weeks of winter proved only half-right),
hot summery weather finally arrived with the May Day holiday weekend ... though inevitably
this never lasts. Still, one of the delights of living by England's south coast premier resort
is to be able to sit outside at some seaside (beachfront or clifftop) cafe and enjoy the
sea view over a meal, ranging from the simplest fare to chef's special. Here are a couple
of examples of this, one from the western end of the 7 miles of sands that front Bournemouth,
Poole and Christchurch, and one from the eastern end. (Hover mouse over top image to see
the one beneath, which you can also download, here).
Branksome
Beach View, Groundhog Day 2018
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
February 2nd
used to be observed as Candlemas, an Anglicisation of the Celtic Imbolc or Oimelc, meaning
when sheep's udders fill with milk in anticipation of the first spring lambs being born.
The first week February is halfway between the midwinter solstice and the spring equinox,
and hence a turning point in the great wheel of the year. The date is now better-known worldwide
as Groundhog Day, when the US media gather to watch whether a local groundhog will emerge
from his den; if it is sunny, he will return to his den promptly, supposedly frightened by
seeing his shadow. This was a custom imported to the US by German farmers who emigrated to
Pennsylvania, to try to predict whether there would be an early spring or 6 more weeks of
winter, i.e. up to the spring equinox March 21. The 'scientific' explanation is that, temperature
and pressure being inversely related, a sunny period of 'false spring' at this time will
be followed by a final stretch of wintry conditions; this is what usually happens, and this
year, freezing overnight temperatures are indeed set to continue. Here, the view is from
just in front of Poole's Branksome Beach cafe, where people are already sitting outside on
the terrace, while others take a brisk stroll along the beachfront.
Harbour
Heights Winter Sunset View
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
To watch
the sun set over Poole Harbour and the Purbeck Hills beyond, perhaps the best location, even
in winter, is the verandah or lounge at the Harbour Heights Hotel. This was originally built
for BOAC passengers and crew arriving on the flying boats that landed in Poole Harbour, and
was a vital transatlantic lifeline during the war, carrying VIPs including Churchill. Its
historic role has recently been recognised with a blue plaque, pictured below, at Poole Museum,
which was formerly 'Airways House,' BOAC's HQ. As its name reflects, the hotel was built
on the heights to command the best view of the harbour, and still does.
The Square & Compass View
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The award-winning
Square & Compass is one of Dorset's most
venerable pubs, a Grade II listed public house which opened in 1793 housed in a pair of limestone
cottages. Situated in a cleft in the Purbeck Hills, it remains unknown to many as it is off
the main tourist routes, but is appealing to those wanting to avoid the crowds in Corfe and
Swanage. The pub is one of those where there is more room outside than in, and where the
only food, to go with the local ales and cider, is pasties and locally made pies. In other
words, people come to sit outside and enjoy the coastal views, which includes watching the
sunset, as shown here.
It got extra publicity last year when Charlie Newman, whose family has owned the pub for
generations, built a timber-replica Stonehenge in the field opposite. (Purbeck Council ordered
it removed, but after adverse publicity, granted a 2-year stay of execution.) It was in the
news again this month, as the pub's own attached museum holding fossils from the Jurassic
Coast yielded up a relic of a prehistoric rodent said to be 'mankind's
oldest mammal ancestor', now named ‘Durlstotherim newmani’ after the museum's
founder. It is just above the hamlet of Worth Matravers, and you can stroll down the hill
to the village duckpond which is its centrepiece. Those wanting a more substantial pub walk
can head the mile down to the seashore at Winspit stone quarry, often used as a film and
tv location. (The pub's name reflects its background in the local stone-quarrying industry.)
For a longer walk, there is St Aldhem's Head with its mediaeval chapel and Jurassic Coast
path memorial to Worth Matravers's role as a test site in wartime
radar development in 1940–1942.
Poundbury
Designer Township
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Poundbury
- Prince Charles's 'designer' township outside Dorchester - dates back to the 1990s, but
has only now just found international fame with its appearance in the tv series Electric
Dreams. The Channel 4/Sony anthology series is based on stories by cult SF author Philip
K. Dick, best known for Blade Runner, currently also in the news for its belated remake.
In the Electric Dreams series episode "The Commuter," it portrays 'Macon Heights', a planned
township in Hampshire which was never built, but is accessible by those who desperately need
to spend time somewhere that dreams come true. The producers said that Poundbury, with its
mix of architectural styles, was ideal, requiring no set dressing.
The upmarket village, which should now properly be referred to as a township (some call it
"an experimental new town"), has grown since 1993 to incorporate some 2500 buildings housing
over 6,000 people, and is open to the public, with its own pub, The Poet Laureate. Our main
image above, meant to convey something of its dreamlike aspect, was taken from the A35 main
road just W of Dorchester, on a breezy summer day. Below is a screenshot from the tv series
showing one of the main streets.
Winchester
from St Giles Hill Viewpoint
[click
to view or right-click to download full-size version]
In England,
whenever early summer weather is variable (affecting events like Glastonbury and Wimbledon),
the media look to St Swithun’s Day on July 15th for a clue as to what the rest of the summer
will be like, i.e. from the week the school holidays start. The popular rhyme the press still
quote ran "St Swithun's Day if thou dost rain / For forty days it will remain /
St Swithun's Day if thou be fair / For forty days 'twill rain nae mare."
There is a legend to do with local Saxon bishop St Swithun imposing a curse of 40 days rain,
but the mid-July timing is probably more relevant as unsettled or rainy weather patterns
often continue through the summer. This year, the day was grey and dull with spots of rain,
and forecasts indicate this will continue.
In any event, by the early 19th-C., the locals seem to have regarded St Swithun’s Day as
one for gambling on the local horse races, according to Jane Austen’s final poem “Venta”
(“Oh Venta depraved / By vice you’re enslaved”). The bicentenary of her death at
Winchester is currently being commemorated, as she was living there in July 1817, when she
wrote her humorous ditty a few days before she died age 41 of causes unknown, and was buried
under the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral. Her allusion to 'Venta' is to its old name,
Venta Belgarum or meeting place of the Belgae - the townsite was settled by a confederation
of refugee tribes who left Belgium before Caesar’s legions arrived from the south.
The view depicted here is from St Giles Hill, where the largest mediaeval fair in Europe,
St. Giles Fair, was held the first 2-3 weeks of September, when all other trading in the
city was suspended as traders arrived from London and across western Europe. It began on
1st September, the feast day of St. Giles, the vegetarian hermit venerated by pilgrims in
the Crusades era, whose widespread cult extended to Winchester, which was situated on the
pilgrims’ way along the South Downs stretching west from Canterbury. Winchester was then
capital of England, but when it was eclipsed by London, and the countryside was hit by the
Black Death in the mid-14th-C, the church-run fair and the site lost its importance, and
today it is a park with a wooden viewing platform looking west over the city. The timing
of the fair in the first half of September was nevertheless a wise choice, because even in
an iffy summer, the weather has usually settled down by then, as this photo shows.
The Haven, Sandbanks
from the Studland ferry
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The four-star
1920s Art Deco style hotel The Haven is one of the area's landmarks. Its prominent position
on a peninsula at the mouth of Poole Harbour was why Marconi did some of his first radio-telegraphy
tests here, sending Morse messages across the Channel in 1897. Now the Sandbanks peninsula
is about to see its biggest developmental changes ever, and the 3 big hotels there will be
the focus.
Plans to build a new 5-storey apartment block on the Sandbanks Boatyard site, on the east
side just behind, have been refused, but a £100m plan from the same developer has been
approved to demolish the Salterns Harbourside Hotel and adjacent buildings on the west side,
for a new Salterns Marina complex with a 6-storey replacement hotel and 7-storey apartment
block. The developer's current plan is to bulldoze the Haven and the Sandbanks Hotel behind
it, and re-model the Harbour Heights Hotel, which sits on the hill at the base of the peninsula.
The Haven site is to be a 10-storey luxury apartment building with 196 flats and a roof-top
restaurant called Jurassic Eye. The Sandbanks Hotel will simply be replaced by a newer 150-200
bed hotel, while the Harbour Heights Hotel would be redeveloped as a 40-suite 'aparthotel'.
Like the Haven, it too is a 'historic' site, being built for BOAC passengers arriving on
the massive flying boats that landed in Poole Harbour, which in WWII was a key lifeline,
bringing in VIPs from Churchill to Bob Hope. It commands the best view of the harbour.
Sandbanks has been called England's Malibu, with house prices here the highest outside London,
and 4th-highest in the world. It is the playground of the rich and (sometimes) famous, and
so this 'Benidorm' development has garnered powerful opposition. But Poole Council, which
must approve the £200m investment, is so broke they recently closed the public toilets by
the ferry ramp - until national press coverage forced a temporary reprieve, for the summer.
Arne Winter
Evening
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Last autumn,
the BBC chose the RSPB-run Arne nature reserve on the southern side of Poole Harbour for
its live Autumnwatch show, broadcast over 4 nights for the half-term holiday break in late
October. In late January, Chris Packham and the team returned to Arne for Winterwatch, available
on iPlayer, here . When not overrun
by such birdwatching events, Arne is typically quiet, ideal for a peaceful country walk of
an hour or so to the seashore and back, accessible from the RSPB car park on the Arne village
road off the busy A351 Wareham-Corfe-Swanage highway. The peninsula is officially Britain's
most biodiverse region, and there is other wildlife besides birds to see, such as deer in
the daytime and fox in the evening.
Bournemouth
Square Xmas Market Illuminations
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Bournemouth's
now-annual event was originally called the German Market, but after various complaints, it
was decided this was impolitic, and it is now known as the Alpine Market, or simply the Christmas
Market. The Alpine-chalet style stalls are not limited to offerings from the Alpine countries
however, cf there is a Greek food stall this year. There are more Xmas attractions such as
a skating rink in the adjacent Lower Gardens.
The Christkindlsmarkt concept goes back to at least the 16th century in Germany,
and they are now a major feature of Xmas, with stalls offering bratwurst, beer and gluhwein
as well as xmas trinkets. Originally this was a "Weihnachtsmarkt" i.e. Christmas-Eve event,
but as elsewhere, Bournemouth's runs 6 weeks (till NY's Eve).
These Xmas markets take on a special meaning this year since the December 19th attack on
the Breitscheidplatz market, off Berlin's main western square. Twitter has a new hashtag
#IchBinEineBerliner, harking back to JFK's famous line during his visit, which now takes
on a new meaning expressing solidarity akin to the slogans that appeared after the November
2015 Paris attacks. The Breitscheidplatz Christkindlsmarkt has now reopened, on the basis
that people can resist extremism by carrying on and not letting it destroy normal life.
A ‘Turneresque’
View Of Poole
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This year
is 200 years since the Year Without a Summer in 1816, when mists and storms prevailed, famously
inspiring Romantic authors to create works with Gothic Sturm-und-Drang effects, like Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley, whose creative bicentenary is being celebrated in Bournemouth, where she
is buried. The misty summer is also claimed to have helped inspire landscape painter JMW
Turner (1775-1851) to begin the move towards the hazy impressionism characterising his later
work. However, his early work was of recognizable scenes, with paintings based more closely
on sketches taken in the field in all weathers. His first oil to be exhibited at the Academy,
‘Fishermen At Sea’ [1795], shows a moonlit scene of fishing boats braving the sea-swell
inshore of The Needles chalk pinnacles off the Isle of Wight. Turner based his paintings
on sketches made in the field during his walking tours. He had visited inland areas of our
region early on due to 1790s commissions to sketch and paint Salisbury and its cathedral,
Stourhead estate, and Fonthill Abbey.
In 1811, he began walking sections of the south-central coast on commission for a book, Picturesque
Views On the Southern Coast Of England, which involved such extensive field research
it was published in instalments 1814-26. On various walking trips 1811-12, he headed west
along the Dorset coast, to Lyme Regis on the Devon boundary, where he sketched and painted
another famous stormy-seas work, his 1812 "Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire: A Squall". The
first work in the book was from his first viewpoint stopover, getting off the stagecoach
in Parkstone on the wagon-road leading westward down to Poole Harbour. ‘Poole, Dorset
With Corfe Castle In The Distance’ was issued separately as an engraving. The watercolour
version shows a sunny day (when you might be able to discern Corfe Castle ‘In The Distance’
as advertised), but the engraving shows a moodier version, with a more dramatic cloudscape.
(Mouse over the thumbnail image below to compare the 2 versions.) The 1811 roadside viewpoint
Turner used is now obscured by urban build-up, and our photo above is the closest approximation
that can be had today, from a viewpoint
slightly farther inland overlooking Parkstone golf course, where greenery still obscures
modern development. The weather the day the photo was taken was suitably gloomy – ‘Turneresque’
might be the word.
Autumn Moon
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Whenever we
get a full moon deemed newsworthy, the press publish shots of it taken with a telescope lens
so it appears gigantic against some skyline feature. In reality it looks nothing like this,
even when it is a 'supermoon', which in fact appears only slightly larger as it is slightly
closer. Telescopic versions foreshorten the perspective for dramatic effect but miss the
point of seeing the moon as humans have for thousands of years, high in a dark sky unaffected
by light pollution from urban lighting. Nor is the moon yellow, orange or red, as in those
photos, the discolouration being caused by atmospheric dust when viewed near the horizon.
It also ignores the fact that in Britain we are unlikely to have clear skies for viewing
due to cloud cover, and must wait for it to emerge through a gap in the clouds, where it
creates a halo effect, a swirl of moonlight, as shown here.
As nights become longer in autumn, the night sky becomes more prominent, and this autumn,
several full moons have been deemed newsworthy, each occurring in mid-month, the last two
coinciding with annual meteor showers (Leonid and Geminid). The earliest calendars were lunar-based
and full moons were given names based on their calendric significance. The Harvest Moon occurred
around the autumn equinox when workers in the wheatfields might need the light of a full
moon if working late to reap a harvest before the first frosts killed the plants. The Hunter's
Moon refers to the practice of hunting game such as deer to be salted and preserved as protein
for the winter ahead. In North America, autumn is still official hunting season for modern
recreational hunters; but locally the practice would go back to the Palaeolithic-era deer
hunters of Hengistbury Head, the first known human occupants of the area. The last, in December,
is known traditionally as The Long Night's Moon as it closest to the winter solstice. Down
here on the south coast, if you avoid areas where there is no dark sky due to man-made light
pollution, you can still see the moon as our ancestors did as they gathered around their
campfire, a source of wonder, apparently rising out of the sea to traverse the night sky.
Hampshire
Downland
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This year
is the 80th anniversary of the Spitfire's first flight in March 1936, made over the south
Hampshire countryside around Eastleigh airport, commemorated as a 'just-in-time' historical
event. (The flight was made 2 days before the Rhineland was invaded, the first step towards
WWII.) Our interest here is not the Spitfire, whose local connections we've covered elsewhere
[feature here],
but in the era's iconic image, which you can see in officially-encouraged paintings and films
set in the war era, where a lone Spitfire zooms protectively over English downland.
This was more than just a peaceful pastoral image, for this type of landscape had come to
be regarded as the quintessentially English one, the subject of prewar travel-heritage books
which emphasized the long history the land had witnessed. This particular scene is of Watership
Down, and although one can no longer expect to see any colony of rabbits (as in the Richard
Adams novel), it remains a classic instance of English downland, accessible today via its
own walking route, outside Kingsclere, N of Winchester, England's ancient capital.
Highcliffe
Castle, Christchurch
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Highcliffe's
19th-C stately home, reopening 1 February, has just been put on the international tourism
map courtesy of ITV's hit Friday-night drama series Mr. Selfridge.
Its final series features Highcliffe
as the American shopping magnate's country retreat. He leased it for a number of years (the
series fudges the dates) and bought Hengistbury Head overlooking Christchurch Harbour to
build his own new castle on. Instead, neglecting his London department store business to
live the high life with the fun-loving Dolly Sisters, he slowly went bankrupt. He had to
sell Hengistbury in 1929 to Bournemouth Council. Christchurch Council couldn't afford to
buy the Head, but today they manage the refurbished Highcliffe. (It was derelict for many
years after a disastrous fire.) Nowadays it is open for tours, teas, weddings etc. Built
in 1835, it has been described as "the most important remaining example of the Romantic and
Picturesque style of architecture."
The original owner of the estate, George III's 1760s PM Lord Bute, had an earlier house called
High Cliff built there on the clifftop - too close in fact, as coast erosion forced its abandonment.
The only surviving remnant of Lord Bute's original High Cliff House is its gatehouse lodge,
now the Lord Bute hotel-restaurant on the
main Lymington Road. Bute chose the site as he regarded it "the finest outlook in England,"
and today you can take a walk and see it for yourself, through woodland linked to the adjacent
nature reserve. (For a more sheltered viewpoint during inclement winter weather, the Cliffhanger
Cafe is a short way to the east, down Wharncliffe Rd.) Nearby (opposite The Galleon pub),
is St. Marks churchyard, where the trendsetting entrepreneur is buried with his family.
This entire area together with neighbouring Mudeford became a fashionable resort in the early
19th century. You can read our earlier feature on this, here
, along with the firsthand account of its heyday by a notorious local aristocrat, here
.
Fireworks
Over Bournemouth Pier
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Fireworks
celebrate many seasonal civic rites of passage. In Bournemouth they are part of the tourism
draw each year, with the biggest display usually the final one of the season, the Pier being
the main 'launching pad' for the show. Bournemouth Pier has just been celebrated in the media
for another reason: the designer of its main building, the Pier Theatre, is one of only two
women whose waternarked images are on the new UK passport, which has a ‘Creative United Kingdom’
theme. Architect Elisabeth Scott was Bournemouth-born and returned in the late 50s to work
for the town, designing the Pier's dominant building, the Pier Theatre, which was completed
in 1960 after the Pier was strengthened to support it. (The 1880s pier had been partly torn
up in WW2 to foil any German invasion, and repaired in the 50s so it could reopen as a promenade.)
It operated as a theatre for over 50 years, and many familiar names played there (Sir David
Jason claimed he was 'discovered' there). But "end of the pier" theatre as a British institution
had long been regarded as infra dig, a venue for downmarket farces that would appeal to undemanding
holiday crowds - who as the decades wore on became more sophisticated and tired of the old
fare. Eventually, in 2013, the Theatre went the way of so many others, and closed down, being
currently used for a kids adventure-playground attraction. However the building itself is
being preserved ... in case funding is ever found so that it can continue as some sort of
community theatre.
The
Blue Pool, Purbeck
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This year
is the 80th anniversary of one of Dorset's more exotic attractions, a landscape which appears
a natural one, but is in fact man-made. The Blue Pool nested in the Purbeck Hills south of
Wareham was originally a clay-pit on the heath, part of the chalk- and clay-working industry
which had provided material for clay pipes etc since the 17th century. It fell into disuse
in the early 20th century as it flooded with rain and groundwater, the pool taking on a turquoise
hue due to clay particles in suspension reflecting the sunlight. A tearoom
was opened on the 25-acre site in 1935, and pines and other trees were planted to create
shaded scenic walks around the pool. (You can just glimpse the tearooms in the picture, across
the pool, now expanded into a cafe and museum with souvenir shop.)
The site, part of the Furzebrook Estate, is now home to many species, from relatively rare
birds to sand lizards and deer, and has been protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest
since 1985. It is almost a unique landscape, more like somewhere in Greece than England.
In fact, the BBC used it as a 'stand-in' location for some needed additional filiming for
their cult 1970s series The Lotus Eaters, otherwise set and filmed in Greece. Given
the economic and political crisis and extreme heatwave now afflicting Greece, it may be the
closest some will get to this type of Mediterranean countryside for the time being.
Salisbury
Cathedral spire seen from Old Sarum
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Normally, England's
main annual summer Christian pilgrimage is the one ending at Glastonbury's ruined Abbey (in
July), but this year it is a much shorter pilgrimage route [4km or 2.5 miles] that got international
press attention. Although a walk between a pair of old and new cathedral sites, it is is
more than a Christian-pilgrimage event, for it marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.
This document, signed (technically, sealed) by King John at Runnymede in June 1215, first
limited the divine right of kings in England and is regarded as the foundation of English
constitutional law. The best-preserved of the four surviving copies is kept at Salisbury
Cathedral, which sponsored the event.
The present Salisbury Cathedral replaced the old hilltop one in the 13th century, its building
stone hauled away to the new site in the Avon valley below, where there was a proper water
supply for its growing population of soldiers, churchmen and merchants, and a mediaeval town
was laid out in a chessboard grid pattern. In its day, the earlier site of Sarum (now Old
Sarum) was the region's major religious, political and commercial centre, and it was here
that William the Conqueror ordered all the nobility to assemble and swear fealty to him in
1086. Today it is an English Heritage site, where the only glimpse of the now-vanished castle
and town buildings is found in the signboards. (See image below.) A recent geophysical survey
revealed even more
lost buildings in the outer ring of Old Sarum, including what seems to be a royal palace
outside the castle. It seems if there was a real-life inspiration for Camelot when the French
romances were given an English setting after the Norman Conquest, this was it.
Easter
Promenade, Bournemouth
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Warm sunny
spring skies finally broke through the clouds on Easter Monday at the end of an otherwise
grey bank holiday weekend. The polar front which turned late March into a brief false spring
has been replaced by a 'Spanish plume' bringing balmy Mediterranean weather. It has been
an Easter weekend tradition since at least Victorian times for families or couples to go
for a promenade through their local municipal gardens or along the seafront Esplanade, and
this year spring weather appeared just in time to mark the occasion.
The view above is from the clifftop at the Russell-Cotes
Art Gallery & Museum [see inset below], which stands on the East Cliff next
to the Royal Bath Hotel as it was built by the hotel's then owner. In Victorian and Edwardian
times, this mansion house was the home of the town's leading art collector and is now its
public art gallery, which is free to locals in winter (donations accepted) and runs major
exhibitions throughout the summer when paid admissions are in force, as with the current
Art Nouveau exhibition.
The house is preserved almost as it was (restored in 2001 to its 1921 appearance with a £3M
HLF grant). It was used by filmmaker Ken Russell to represent the Hollywood home of Rudolph
Valentino in his 1977 biopic, and was a key location in Jeremy Paxman's 2009 BBC art-history
tv series The Victorians.
Early
Spring Sun In The Purbeck Hills
[click to view,
right-click to download full-size version]
This view looks
southwards towards the coast hills above the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast. March has
arrived and the long winter is almost over; the sun is out and the grass is starting to grow
again. This early-spring pastoral scene shows the donkeys at the Margaret
Green Animal Sanctuary & Visitor Centre at Church Knowle just west of Corfe Castle [see
map inset below]. Free and open every day except Christmas, it is a popular local attraction
where people wander about the farm looking at the donkeys [as seen here], goats, horses,
pigs, roosters, rabbits and cats. The latter, being household creatures rather than farm
animals, live in a communal room or meshed individual boarding kennels. The farm animals
live in outdoor paddocks or corrals. All the animals have placards on their enclosures telling
about them, sometimes their individual case stories where they are up for adoption. There
is also a Garden Of Remembrance pet cemetery.
Knowlton
Church, December Dusk
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Knowlton Church
in East Dorset is a site which we've shown before for its unique setting - a ruined Norman
church inside a prehistoric henge or ring, part of an old church policy to build atop pagan
sites. More generally, it makes an ideal vantage point for observing the night sky. This
image, an unretouched photo shot at dusk (i.e. 430pm), was taken the Saturday before the
winter solstice, an evening when the weather forecast (coldest night of the year) meant the
sky would be clear for once. In Britain, opportunities for stargazing are more often than
not ruined by clouds, but the next day the press in southern England carried many photos
of the Geminids meteor shower that happened around 2am. The pair of tall yews visible in
the background here stand on the eastern perimeter, towards the rising sun. Yews are a feature
of many sacred sites: their leaves being poisonous, local farmers will not let their cattle
stray into such precincts.
Aerial photography and mapping has revealed the prehistoric earthworks circle is only
one of several in this field, and also nearby is a burial mound, the Great Barrow, which
is the largest round barrow in Dorset. Remains of a hamlet and a Saxon burial ground are
also detectable. The purpose of the prehistoric complex remains obscure (a tribal centre?),
and the church is similarly obscure - nobody knows who it was dedicated to or why it was
abandoned (one theory is the Black Death of the 1340s, but it was in use after that).
As you only have to walk a few yards from where you park to the site (grass carefully cropped
courtesy of English Heritage), it makes a popular viewpoint for viewing the night sky, as
perhaps the ancients did. More details and photos on our 'Top Ten Romantic Ruins' page, here.
Christchurch Harbour From The River Stour
[click to view,
right-click to download full-size version]
Dorset has
several navigable rivers, which you can cruise even if you don't have your own boat, via
a water-bus service. Going west to east, there are half-day cruises
across Poole Harbour up the tidal lower Frome to the market town of Wareham, which Alfred
fortified after the Danes occupied it as a useful sheltered river-port (it still bills itself
as 'Saxon Walled Town'). There are also cruises down the lower Stour, connecting to the lower
Avon at Christchurch.
Pictured is a view from Vintage Ferry Service's Stour river-cruiser, with Christchurch Priory
in the background. The United Motor Boats vintage cruiser 'Merry Widow' is a 'gentleman's
launch' built in 1922 for use on Lake Coniston, found neglected in a boatyard in 2001 and
rebuilt. The 40-minute cruise runs from the recently restored Tuckton
Tea Gardens as its upriver departure point to Wick Ferry, Christchurch Quay (an award-winning
site) and finally to Mudeford Sandbank. In a sense the cruise also covers the mouth of the
Avon as this flows into the Stour here, just off to the right of the scene pictured. [Google
Maps link here ]. The
area is rich in heritage as well as scenic views, too much to go into here, but Dorset Life
magazine has just done a feature on the Mudeford/ Hengistbury Head end of it, online here
.
Yarmouth
Pier, I of Wight
[click
to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This week is
the 200th anniversary of the first appearance of that familiar and much-loved fixture of
the British seaside resort, the seaside pier. It was 200 years ago the first of the structures
that would become a British 'icon' was built, at Ryde on the NE side of Wight, in 1814. This
still stands but is somewhat the worse for wear. (Most piers have been extensively rebuilt
for this reason, their foundation piles lasting only a few decades.) Pictured here instead
is a neighbouring pier on the NW side of Wight. Built in 1876, and now a Grade II listed
structure, Yarmouth Pier claims it
is the longest wooden pier - as well as the only all-wood pier surviving today.
The seaside-resort pier should really be called the promenade or 'pleasure' pier. That is,
a structure that is an attraction in itself, with 'amusement' amenities, and not merely a
jetty or landing stage. Unlike many other subsequent piers such as Bournemouth's, which is
mainly postwar and comes complete with an end-of-the-pier theatre, cafe etc, Yarmouth has
retained its original design, with only a ticket booth at its outer end, but has amenities
at its landward end. The 'promenade' aspect is served by its length of over 600 feet.
Piers of course retained their original practical function as landing stages, with lower
decks where passengers could embark and disembark from the many pleasure steamers whose regular
visits the pier made possible where the coast was otherwise too shallow. Below is an image
of Bournemouth Pier with the local pleasure boat Bournemouth Belle and the larger paddlewheeler
the SS Waverley docked at the pier's lower landing stage. (For a larger image of the Waverley
arriving at Bournemouth Pier, scroll down the page.) Yarmouth Pier is still an active landing
stage, and the main photo in fact was taken from the PS Waverley on one of its annual visits;
during the summer season, smaller passenger ferries from Poole, Swanage, Weymouth and Christchurch
also sometimes use it. In the photo you can also see Wightlink's Lymington ferry, which being
a car ferry has its own roadside dock. There is an appreciation of the seaside pier as a
venerable national institution by Dame Joan Bakewell, patron of the National Piers Society,
here
.
The
Needles, IOW
[ right-click to view or download full-size version]
The Needles
rocks and lighthouse (with helipad on top) represent one of England's most iconic views,
used as a BBC visual due to its instant recognisability. Along with Old Harry Rocks opposite,
the two promontories form the entrance to the great bay which shelters the coast from the
open sea, making the bayshore westward past Christchurch, Bournemouth and Poole suitable
for the development of seaside resorts. The view southward towards and out past The Needles
- westernmost point of the Isle of Wight - was called 'the finest outlook in England' by
former Prime Minister Lord Bute. He built almost the first seaside villa on the protected
bayshore - since rebuilt on a grander scale as Highcliffe Castle - which began the late Georgian
fashion for 'marine villas' and thus led to the establishment of spa-resorts all around the
bay.
Now however, it seems a case of 'enjoy the view while it lasts' as the world's largest industrial
windpark looms on the horizon, promoted by various interests as the answer to our energy
needs. In extent, it will occupy part of 3 counties, be larger than the Isle of Wight, with
its hundreds of turbine masts taller than anything in London. Planning objections have led
to its northern edge being shaved back so that it no longer obstructs east-west sightlines
between Wight and the mainland; but the north-south vista, that open horizon stretching into
the distance, will no longer exist. The new Navitus Bay industrial park will also sit atop
the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage site, and last month Unesco wrote
to Whitehall that if the giant turbine park goes ahead, World Heritage status may be withdrawn
from the Jurassic Coast.
Sunny
Spring Days, At Long Last
- The Lower Stour at Tuckton
[right-click to download full-size version]
Spring is by
definition a transitional season, starting out as February late-winter weather and ending
up early summer as May dawns. The result is a mixed period of unpredictable weather in March,
reflecting the saying 'March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb'. Now
the spring equinox [21 March] is here, the storms and floods that dominated the forecasts
for months having finally ended 2-3 weeks ago. People can at long last get out and go for
a walk on riverbanks (in this case, as pictured here, the Lower Stour at Tuckton) that were
underwater a short while ago. In the past, the lower stretches would sometimes freeze right
over and become crossable on foot, cf here.
Now we have sunny intervals by day with freezing temperatures at night, which at least is
a start.
Winter Skies, Poole Harbour
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This winter will no doubt remembered for its storm-floods and sea-surges, the worst in over
20 years. Thousands were left without power over the midwinter holidays, overflowing riverbanks
are forcing evacuations of entire communities, and police are warning the public to stay
away from the seafront after several people were swept off esplanades.
Pictured here is Poole Harbour, the largest safe haven for boats on England’s south-central
coast, from leisure craft to cross-Channel ferries. It has survived the recent weather relatively
unscathed, but now faces a different kind of storm brewing. The Crown Estate’s Commissioners
are considering a plan to build a road and a bridge to turn one of Poole Harbour’s islands
into a car park – as an accessory for yet another new planned marina.
The Crown Estate is the official Crown corporation which owns, among other vast holdings,
almost the entire coastal seabed, and operates under an Act which says their Commissioners’
authority cannot be challenged. This includes their licensing out areas to commercial interests,
in this case marinas, in this case whether or not the Poole
Harbout Commissioners approve. At anchorages all around the coast, the endless clinking
sound of yacht cleats and lines as they repeatedly strike the aluminium masts is a permanent
feature of life, as many yachts remain at anchor year-round, but mooring fees are a money-spinner
for local harbour authorities and yacht clubs.
Local officials and residents are already concerned about plans to build the world's largest
wind-turbine 'park' out in Poole Bay affecting tourism
adversely and even jeopardising
the Jurassic Coast’s World Heritage Site status. The sudden revelation, on the eve of the
holidays, of the new plan with a January consultation deadline, to turn one of the Harbour’s
islands into a car park has pushed the matter into the headlines,
despite the protestations of the various parties behind the process they are merely following
procedure, and the plans cannot be divulged as they are commercially confidential.
This also follows on news that
none of the various sites proposed by county Wildlife Trusts along here, the eastern end
of the Jurassic Coast, are included in the current list of Marine Conservation Zones announced
in late November. This was followed in turn by another revelation
that the County Council has just quietly approved another plan to explore for gas outside
the harbour mouth, in Poole Bay, adjacent to where the giant wind-turbine site is planned.
There is already another longstanding industrial development invisible in the background
of this photo, a hidden oilfield called Wytch Farm (the oil derricks etc are hidden by trees).
For five decades this hidden site has been Western Europe’s largest onshore oilfield, pumping
up 17,000 barrels a day of crude from a pipe extending a mile down and another mile or so
out into the bay, and this autumn had its operating license extended
for another 21 years.
However the prospect of the new technique of fracking, which can cause earthquakes and change
the water table, has led to renewed concern. The new drilling site is just off Durlston Country
Park, a noted local dolphin-watching site. A similar situation in the Bristol Channel has
demonstrated that the presence of such wildlife may prove a complication
for developers, for wildlife often has more statutory protections than human residents.
PS
Waverley, Bournemouth Pier
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version; as this is a cropped
widescreen image, in Windows Desktop, choose 'Fit' rather than 'Fill' ]
Paddle steamers were a vital link in the opening up of British seaside resorts. Where the
bay was too shallow for them to dock, long piers had to be built, starting 200 years ago
with a mile-long wooden one at Ryde on north Wight (begun 1813). These 'pleasure steamers'
were often operated by railway companies and sometimes the pier would be broadened to run
a train line to the pierhead, as at Ryde, where a train still runs direct to the resorts
on the south coast of Wight. With the decline of the railways, the heyday of the pleasure
steamer ended, but one was saved and now operates around the entire English coast: the PS
Waverley, built in 1947. A brass plaque aboard explains this is actually a replica-replacement
for the 1899-built original, which sailed the Clyde prewar but was sunk in 1940 while evacuating
troops from Dunkirk. The Waverley is the last seagoing paddle steamer in the world and is
claimed to be 'probably the most photographed ship in the world.'
Its seagoing profile is a familiar sight in this area. The restored Waverley sails the south-central
coast every September, docking at local resorts like Ryde, Bournemouth, Weymouth and Swanage
(the photo illustrating the Wikipedia article on the boat's history, here
, shows it in Swanage Bay). For those who prefer a scenic shot, there is an alternative clickable
one below, showing Waverley departing Sandown Bay on the south coast of Wight on one of its
September day excursions.
High
Summer, Poole Harbour
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The current heatwave has driven millions to the south coast in search of cooling waters.
Normally English summer is defined as 3 sunny days then a thunderstorm, but it has been sunny
since Midsummer Day on June 24 and for over a week now it has been hotter than for years
(nearly 30 degrees C. in places), with no relief in sight. That 'relief' of course is at
least partial cloud cover offering intervals of shade from the glare, as seen here.
While millions seem content to lie baking on packed beaches, the more adventurously minded
have gone on as well as in the water, on water-craft of various kinds, and nowhere is more
suitable for this on the south coast than Poole Harbour. Recently the harbour and surrounding
area have been featured on tv in the Ben Fogle country-lifestyle series Harbour Lives
[ITV-player link here],
no doubt soon out on DVD. Poole has also just been chosen as the venue to host European Maritime
Day 2017, which means as well as the official 2-day conference on ' Blue Growth ' etc, there
will be several days of tie-in festival activities around the harbour - yacht and power-boat
races, sailing ships, flotillas of small vessels, a pageant, etc.
While the traditional claim this is the world's largest natural harbour is not correct,
within its 98-mile circumference it does offer a considerable variety of scenery and activities.
Here, looking SW from Rockley Heath in the NW corner, the harbour's biggest peninsula, Arne,
is visible. Less well-known than Brownsea Island [to the left of the picture], this is a
quiet nature-reserve area of trails, wetland [see image below] and lagoon, with its own 'secret'
bay, deer and much bird-life (RSPB bird-watching hide by lagoon). In the background to the
right is another popular tourism destination, the Purbecks between Corfe Castle and Swanage,
which we've covered here
and its various on-screen appearances of the Purbecks area, here.
West Bay from Thorncombe Beacon
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Visitor interest
in this locality has shot up due to what the press has called the 'Broadchurch effect', after
the ITV murder-mystery serial Broadchurch. The drama attracted around 9 million
viewers
and enquiries and visits to the various West Dorset tourism websites have suddenly spiked.
Only the seafront scenes were in fact shot here, as West Bay itself was too small to provide
the range of locations needed to portray the fictional town of Broadchurch (the rest was
Clevedon in Somerset), but these were scenic enough to promote a surge in visitor interest.
East Cliff Beach where the body was found and the sandstone cliffs above became the series'
iconic image, but the local seafront cafes, hotel and even caravan park have also attracted
interest and begun promoting themselves with the tagline 'as seen on Broadchurch,' and a
tour of tie-in locations will begin when the DVD is released in May.
The photo above, looking eastward down the Jurassic Coast, is taken from Thorncombe hill
just where the beacon (a replica of one built to warn of the approach of the Spanish Armada)
seen in Broadchurch's finale actually stands. (Film and tv dramas often perform a certain
sleight-of-hand with locations, e.g. the Broadchurch Police Station in the round harbour-front
building is actually part of a cafe.) In the distance below, West Bay can be made out with
its twin piers enclosing its harbour-mouth and marina, and the sandstone cliffs above East
Cliff Beach. In between is Eype, on whose slopes a clifftop scene was filmed. This part of
the Jurassic Coast is where white chalk cliffs give way to red sandstone ones stretching
westward to become the red earth of Devon. Beyond West Bay in the far distance is Abbotsbury
with its mediaeval swannery by the Fleet lagoon enclosed by Chesil Bank. Real footage of
the Fleet is seen in the film The Dam Busters showing the actual test drops made
here, and this is also the setting of the 1898 smuggling classic Moonfleet. More
recently Ian McEwan's award-winning tragic novella On Chesil Beach was set at a
hotel here. Out of shot in the other direction, looking westward, is Golden Cap, the South
Coast's highest headland, and beyond that, Lyme Regis and Devon.
This type of visitor interest is generally classed as literary tourism, and for those wanting
to explore this theme farther, the locality has associations from Jane Austen onwards. Lyme
Regis with its stone Cobb pier is best known for associated scenes in her 1818 Persuasion
and later in local resident John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman. West Bay
itself was seen in an earlier tv series, BBC's Harbour Lights, which utilised the
same locations such as the Bridport Arms Hotel to portray the fictional 'Bridehaven'as well
as other sites in the surrounding area. East Cliff Beach was previously used for the scene
shown behind the titles of every episode of BBC's The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin,
where Reggie leaves his clothes on the beach to stage his faked suicide.
Thomas Hardy called West Bay 'Port Bredy', as it is essentially the harbour for the market
town of Bridport. The larger town of Bridport just inland has been striving in recent years
to establish a reputation as a centre for artists, craftspeople, writers and other creative
types, and for the last ten years has been the adopted home town of Broadchurch's creator
Chris Chibnall. He normally writes more fantasy-oriented drama like Life On Mars,
Torchwood and Camelot, but says he conceived Broadchurch as his
love letter to this scenic area and is planning a followup drama.
Hurst
Castle, Solent Narrows
This sea fort is currently in the news
because shifting coastal erosion patterns mean that waves are now lapping at its foundations,
threatening to undermine it. It is of considerable historic interest to visitors for it is
a development of several centuries of military fortification to control the Solent Narrows
between West Wight and the mainland. From here, there is a view east along the Solent, west
into Christchurch, Bournemouth and Poole Bays, south to the Isle of Wight, and north over
the New Forest-Lymington area. Seen here from a westward-looking angle, in fact it sits on
a shingle spit which reaches most of the way southward to Wight, leaving only a narrow passage
for shipping. (This also made attack from its landward side difficult.)
The original Hurst Castle, a moated 12-sided tower, was one of a string built in the era
of Henry VIII. Henry's ongoing interest in divorce and re-marriage to obtain a male heir
put him at odds with the Catholic church, and Catholic France and Spain regularly threatened
raids, if not actual invasion. The Solent/Southampton Water passage was regarded as a vulnerable
avenue of attack here, and other 1540s Henrician castles were built nearby, several of which,
like Calshot and Yarmouth, survive on Southampton Water and Wight's Solent coast. Unlike
mediaeval castles, the Henrician castles were forts in the more modern sense - intended as
artillery emplacements, with projecting bastions to hold cannon so it could command the approaches
on all sides. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Hurst was used as a garrison and gaol (Charles
I was imprisoned here in 1648 en route to his trial and execution) and a naval base to discourage
smuggling.
As it had become dilapidated, it was repaired during the Napoleonic invasion scare, and then
in the 1860s, when (for reasons now obscure) England's defence minister Lord Palmerston again
feared France would invade, an extensive set of fortifications nicknamed the Palmerston Follies
were built all along the coast. The original fort was built over, with two large brick wing
extensions which housed much heavier guns. The first of several lighthouses there was erected
in 1786, but the one visible here at right also dates to the 1860s. In the Second World War,
the fort saw service as an anti-aircraft battery etc. during Luftwaffe raids on the Southampton
docks. Hurst Castle is today looked after by English Heritage [details here].
Due to the narrow passage, a good view can be obtained of it (as above) from any passing
boat (eastward-looking angle pictured below), while its interior can be explored
by landing from the passenger boat from Keyhaven, or on foot, along the narrow shingle spit
which was part of its natural defenses.
Abbey Gardens, Winchester
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Currrently, for the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, Hampshire
tourism agencies are promoting
visitor sites in and around around Winchester, where the author died in 1817 and is buried
(in the Cathedral), with a guide to surrounding landmarks, such as nearby Chawton (where
she lived, and the Austen Museum is). Outside of organised package tours for keen 'Janeites'
(where participants sometimes dress in Regency costume), there may not be the hoped-for upsurge
in visitors that tourism chiefs are hoping for, as it's only a recent Austen screen adaptation
that really bumps up visitor numbers. Nevertheless, Winchester is worth seeing in and for
itself via a walkabout tour. A City Tourism leaflet outlines a recommended 'Sunset' walk
around the town centre, starting at the statue of King Alfred [visible at left in image above],
this being the old capital of England after he established his kingdom of Wessex.
While trying to plan for a sunset is difficult in England even in summer, the route can be
walked at any time of day, week, or month. It includes St Giles Hill viewpoint, from where
you can see over the town, before ending at Abbey Gardens, above. Oddly, it doesn't include
the Castle Great Hall (with its Arthurian 'Round Table'), ruined Wolvesey Palace, the old
town's cobbled back streets, Winchester Cathedral (where Jane is buried), or the house where
she died (on College Street, recently seen in the film Les Miserables); but with
a town map these can easily be worked into the route as slight detours.
Swans
Over Poole Harbour
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
"…the swan /Brings winter on his wing" goes the old weather
adage. Watching vees of swans, geese, ducks and other birds flying south was long a reliable
indicator of the onset of winter. These days the picture is more confused. The "first day
of winter," i.e. the day of the winter solstice [Dec 21st], which some claimed (citing the
Mayan calendar) would be the world's last, in the event proved a sunny moment amidst a stormy
season which has officialdom advising us not to travel over Xmas, due to widespread flooding.
This autumn, the RSPB reported thousands of migrating Scandinavian birds dying off the coast,
the unusually adverse weather exhausting them just before they could reach the safety of
the English coast. England's south coast has always offered a first or last stopping place
for waterbirds flying north or south in spring or autumn, and a large part of the local seasonal
economy was built around shooting and trapping migratory game birds en route. The region
has plenty of waterways, like Poole Harbour, above, but artificial "decoy" ponds
were also built to lure flocks of ducks and other waterbirds to where they could
be netted more easily. Swans are the largest members of the duck family, and were bred for
centuries by monks like those at Abbotsbury, who liked to have roast swan on meat-free Fridays.
(In the mediaeval monastic rule-book, waterbirds like swans were conveniently classed as
fish, not meat.)
If you want to see swans close up, Britain's largest nesting colony of mute swans is still just along the coast, at Abbotsbury Swannery on Fleet Lagoon (where the 'Dam Busters' bomb was tested). In fact, it is the world's only managed colony of such birds. Today, these swans are protected, the property of the Crown and no longer eaten; nor are they captive; their wings are not clipped and they can fly away. As they weren't calling when they were photographed, it's not clear what breed of swans these three specimens are (see closeup). Due to the region being such a crossroads for bird migration routes, whooper swans, trumpeter swans, and mute swans (which do not trumpet or whoop, only hiss) are all possibilities.
That Last Alfresco Meal - Terrace Bistro, Bournemouth Central
Gardens
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Once again, it's that time of year, to indulge in that last alfresco meal of the year before
it becomes too chilly to be able to sit outside comfortably and enjoy the warmth of the sun.
(Local mid-day temp. today, Nov 1st: 10 C.) The 'Continental' culture of pavement or terrace
cafes with outdoor seating was a long time coming here (some councillors tried to block it
as un-English), but is now an accepted part of the resort's more upmarket identity, for both
visitors and residents. This particular bistro/cafe/bar with free wi-fi is actually the latest,
opened this year, as part of the refurbishment of the Pavilion overlooking
Bournemouth's Central Gardens [view from terrace shown below], which now includes a series
of heritage plaques in black marble on the terrace above the cafe. The cafe is one of a number
of new establishments in Bournemouth (and Poole - cf. at the refurbished Lighthouse arts
centre) run by the Council's nonprofit company, BH Live - a sign of changing times.
View From Badbury Rings
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
If there were to be a quintessential image of this summer just ended, it would have to be
of changeable weather with sun one moment and rain the next. This is what happened here,
with that approaching low cloud in the distance soaking the scene in a sudden rain squall
a few moments after this was taken. The scene here is the view from Badbury Rings hillfort,
an Iron Age crossroads fortification in east-central Dorset. Today accessed via the B3082
Wimborne-Blandford road, it guarded a key local crossroads, where the Salisbury-Dorchester
road met the Poole-Bath long-distance trade route. It stands in the estate around Kingston
Lacy House managed by the National Trust (car park free, donation requested). The surrounding
terrain pictured here is used for the annual point-to-point race run by the local hunt.
The hill here is relatively low [see reverse angle below], but fortified with several concentric
rings of steep ditches and high [up to 40'] embankments (the vantage point from which the
photo was taken). These once would have held a wooden stockade to help keep out raiders from
tribes to the NE after their cattle. However this did not save it from the invading Romans
in AD 43.
As one of the strongholds of the Celtic Durotriges tribe, it would have been one of the
20 'oppida' (British towns) that fell to the siege tactics of the legionaries commanded by
Rome's future emperor Vepasian. Part of the defenses of these British oppida (of
which there were hundreds) was the fact that (as Caesar had earlier complained) they were
on wooded hills, and Badbury remains one of the few to retain tree cover inside. (Other hillforts
Vespasian attacked, like Hod and Hambledon Hills to the north or Maiden Castle to the west,
have long been denuded of tree cover. However you can walk clockwise around the rings at
Badbury, as some do for luck (it's a neopagan thing), and then into the beech and pine wood
to find the OS trig point with plaque showing what lies in each direction.
The original name recorded in Roman records seems to have been Vindocladia. The exact meaning
of this is not agreed, perhaps as it seems to lead to a rather Romantic result: vindo means
white or sacred, and clad is the same root as in gladiator and claymore (Scottish Celtic
claidh mor), both referring to a sword with a broad, slightly leaf-shaped blade.
For those who like exploring Romantic legend, the woods were used at one point as a breeding
ground for ravens, and this is thought to be one of the reasons (the other being its name)
for the idea that this was the site of Arthur's famous victory of Badon Hill.
In one Arthurian tale, Arthur kept pet ravens and he was supposedly reincarnated as one of
the raven family. Ravens were regarded as omens in Celtic lore, and are still kept as magical-guardian
birds at the Tower Of London, originally called the White Mount. In legend, Arthur dug up
the sacred head of the Celtic god-hero Bran buried there to safeguard Britain from invasion,
saying he alone would guard the country. This is the basis of the belief that Britain will
fall if the Tower ravens ever leave. That was why Churchill had their wings clipped during
the war, to make sure the prophecy would not seem to be coming true, for even in this sceptical
modern age, legends and myths have a powerful presence, which can sometimes be felt when
visiting such sites.
English Summer, Southwest Dorset
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This is the view over Chesil Bank and the Fleet Lagoon, at noon on Midsummer's Day 2012, taken from Abbotsbury hill-fort where a beacon stands commemorating the one lit to signal the coming of the Spanish Armada on 21 July 1588. (In the event, the English Navy drove them off and summer gales then wrecked many of the galleons as they tried to escape up and around the British coast.) After the wettest April, the wettest May, the wettest June for a century and now what looks to be the wettest July, 2012's 'English summer' continues apace. Someone once sarcastically defined English summer as "three fine days and a thunderstorm", but this year it was several fine days (last week) and then a return to stormy weather. What the forecasters refer to as 'unsettled weather' does however provide dramatic cloudscape vistas evoking a Turner painting.
Mill-pond By Throop Mill
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
A picturesque riverbank or weir near a lily-covered mill-pond was a favorite of painters
in pre-photography days. Unfortunately, as with many such views, it is under threat. Throop
Mill [just to the left of the main photo, see inset below] has long been derelict
and the main weir footbridge, popular with walkers, has now become unsafe.
As one of the oldest villages subsumed into Bournemouth, whose northern boundary runs along
the Stour, Throop is a conservation area, with carefully preserved houses and cottages like
the one seen here. It is one of those areas off the main tourist trail but popular with local
walkers, in this case for its access to the Stour's riverbanks, country lanes and green meadows
lying between town and airport. However, the planned conversion of the old mill into a tearoom
and craft shop has had to be shelved
due to lack of funding, and the phrase "enjoy it while it lasts" now applies.
Looking
At Navitus Bay
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Poole Bay from Sandbanks, taken one winter afternoon as HM Cutter Valiant sails out
to the open sea from its berth in Poole Harbour [see inset below], past Old Harry Rocks,
which form the tip of the Purbeck peninsula.
There's always something fascinating about staring out to sea from the coast, gazing at the
empty far horizon of the open sea, often against the natural light, for the emptiness allows
a contemplative moment.
Sadly, it looks like this stretch of sea won't be so open in a few years: there is a plan
to build the world's largest windfarm here. The Mail
has a mockup of the same view as shown above, with the turbines beginning where the departing
Coast Guard cutter is seen here, dead centre on the horizon. Wind turbines exist elsewhere
around the coast as well as inland. (The official library image of HM Cutter Valiant shows
it sailing it past several of them.) But this wind farm or park will be three times larger
than anything that presently exists. It will cover an area the size of Glasgow, with up to
300-plus giant turbines stretching from here across the approach to Bournemouth, to the Isle
of Wight. At nearly 700 feet tall, the turbines will also be taller than anything in London,
visible for around 20 miles. 
At present, one of those mandatory public consultations
has been going on, for what that's worth. Some of the objections being coordinated by the
ad hoc campaigning group Challenge Navitus
to Eneco's "wind park" are to do with maritime safety, as the farm will create
a vast maze of navigation hazards for passenger ferries, merchant ships, official craft like
HMC Valiant or the RNLI lifeboat, as well as the thousands of yachts and other pleasure craft
moored at Poole, Lymington, Cowes etc. However, two years before the public consultation,
the Crown Estate (which owns much of the coast) already handed over to Eneco the 279 square
mile area of seabed it asked for to build its scheme. The area in future will thus be known
as Navitus Bay.
Clavel Tower, Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
New Year’s saw national press coverage on the importance of recognising Britain's “follies”
as well worth preserving. This was prompted by a campaign by historian and author Gwyn Headley,
a tie-in with an ebook-update of his county-by-county series Follies Of England.
‘Follies’ means a building put up for ornamental or aesthetic reasons rather than practical
purposes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, in the wake of the landscaped-estate movement and
associated “Cult Of The Picturesque,” follies became fashionable among the landed gentry.
Your estate was just not really complete without an ornamental tower of some sort, a Greek-style
temple, an Italianate grotto, or some other feature that made your estate resemble a scene
from classical painting or (after the Romantic Movement) a ‘Gothick’ novel. If you were lucky
enough to have a left-over ruin such as a ruined abbey, you could carefully preserve that;
or if not, you could even have a fake ruin purpose-built.
This region of course has a carefully preserved ruined castle, Corfe, and the National Trust
promotes it around this time of year as a "romantic" destination for the Valentine's Day
weekend. It's certainly the best known and most popular preserved ruin, and we've covered
it before.
However, ‘prospect’ towers on the hunting-tower model (for deer-spotting etc) were the most
common type of folly. Pictured here is Clavel Tower, on a headland overlooking Kimmeridge
Bay on the Jurassic Coast [OS map #195, grid-ref SY908/786]. Since its construction c1820
in long-fashionable “Tuscan” architectural style, it’s inspired painters and writers from
Hardy to PD James, but it’s chosen here as it became a symbol (complete with online fundraising
campaign) of Britain’s threatened architectural heritage in this often-overlooked area.
In this case, the threat was from the sea eroding the headland. The tower then became an example of what could be done in the way of preservation: over a two year period, the whole tower was dismantled stone by stone and reassembled just inland, the cost defrayed by turning the rebuilt tower into holiday accommodation. It's more remote and harder to find than busy Corfe Castle, which for many adds to its appeal of Romantic isolation. But for those needing encouragement to venture further, also recently refurbished is the farm-produce cafe/shop in the village, pictured left. Our south-central region has more than a few examples of the different types of folly, and we’re working on a webpage on follies around the region. But in the meantime, some of those on our webpage on preserved scenic ruins arguably qualify as they are preserved largely for aesthetic reasons. [click here].
Tyneham
Valley from Whiteway Hill [click to view, right-click to view download full-size version]
The fine 'Indian summer' weather which began in September right on the day of the autumn
equinox and continued to the last Friday in October is now just a memory. With a long, grim
'Siberian' winter forecast, it seems appropriate to represent that memory with a suitable
local photo, of clouds creeping over a sunlit landscape.
The spot shown here was chosen as it was one long championed by a veteran local campaigner
who died this summer. Rodney Legg, Dorset's most prolific author of nonfiction heritage books,
campaigned to save the site of Tyneham-Worbarrow, situated in a cleft just between the Purbeck
Hills and the Jurassic Coast. In this view looking SE, Tyneham,the main village, is itself
just out of sight, down on the right, as is Worbarrow, which today consists of a few ruined
cottages on the bay of the same name [pictured, inset below]. Road access to Tyneham
is down the near side of the valley.
The government had expropriated this land during WWII for a gunnery practice range
and then broke its promise to hand it back to the evicted locals. Over the decades, these
former residents moved away or died, and campaigner Rodney Legg finally accepted the Army's
stewardship (under public scrutiny due to his campaign) as preferable to the alternative
- the kind of uncontrolled development which leads to vast clifftop caravan parks of the
sort seen elsewhere (e.g. along the coast at Durdle Door). The village of Tyneham is preserved
more or less as it was pre-WWII, and with Remembrance Day weekend coming up, it is worth
mentioning that it too serves as a war memorial.
Unlike in other countries, British wartime why-we-fight artwork tended to depict pastoral
scenes, showing the sunlit uplands of Churchillian metaphor, representing the promised land
of peacetime. This metaphor was to be evoked in the Prime Minister's speech at the September
2011 party rally but was abandoned as inappropriate due to the worsening economic situation,
the various broken promises on policy, and unpopular new measures like the opening up of
the countryside to developers. This last has also served as a recruiting sergeant for the
National Trust, which is spearheading a campaign against uncontrolled development. It was
announced in October that the NT has its highest proportion of its membership in Dorset,
with around 1 in 5 County residents now a member.
The Tyneham-Worbarrow valley is now part of the Army's Lulworth Ranges, and its paths can
be walked when the tank-gunnery range is not in use [access details here
and here ].
Poole
Harbour, from Ham Common viewpoint
[click thumbnail image to view, right-click to download full-size version]
August's changeable
weather, with constantly-alternating sun and rain, has made planning outdoors activities
more difficult. With the various types of marine activities popular along the coast here,
these have at least have been conducted with the reassurance of RNLI-lifeboat or Coastguard
air-sea rescue cover in the event of a mishap. With the increasing numbers of watercraft
of various types, mishaps are becoming frequent, as anyone can observe from this viewpoint
on the north side of Poole Harbour. (Just from this viewpoint, we saw half a dozen in an
hour, involving sailboats, a parasailer and a windsurfer.)
Luckily the Harbour is mostly only 3-4 feet deep, but conditions are very dangerous in the
adjoining open waters along Dorset's Jurassic Coast, which has taken scores of lives in the
past. In the past week or so alone, there have been high-profile incidents ranging from a
car going over the seacliff on Wight (2 dead) at the eastern end to a TV chef and son out
fishing getting trapped inshore on rocks at the western end of the Coast on the Devon boundary
and having to be [safely] rescued
by lifeboat. The Red Arrows fatal jet crash [20 Aug] after their Bournemouth Air Show
display over the bay could easily also have required air-sea rescue presence if the jet had
gone down in the sea instead of the River Stour. (The pilot reportedly tried to crash-land
away from built-up areas.) The helicopter also has to deal with on-land incidents along the
Jurassic Coast, where walkers slip down the cliff etc.
Now however, on the grounds we would be better served by a Euro-coastguard service being
organised in Brussels, the local Coastguard air-sea rescue heliport, midway along the Jurassic
Coast at Portland, is to close. (See an earlier entry further down this page for a downloadable
photo of one its many rescues in action, at Worbarrow Bay.) This is part of the ongoing programme
of cuts to frontline services, with Coastguard stations serving the busy Clyde, Forth and
Thames areas also being shut to save money. Locally, there is a heli-base next door to our
Ham Common viewpoint (a Chinook may suddenly zoom overhead as you picnic), but it is on the
Royal Marines base, for their operational use rather than for air-sea rescue.
Carisbrooke
Castle, Isle Of Wight
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
It's 350 years this month since the 1661 coronation of Charles II marked the public start
of what historians call the Restoration. The Restoration of the Monarchy was greeted as an
occasion of public celebration as it meant the end of two decades of bloody strife ending
in a Puritan republic that had even banned Xmas. Exactly a year later, on 23 April 1662,
a royal wedding was held to secure the succession.
In fact, this did not provide a legitimate heir, and more fighting would occur after Charles's
death. Much of the 17th century was thus given over to civil strife, which began with the
king closing Parliament and arresting MPs, they in turn declaring war on him, and a new republic
under Cromwell ordering him beheaded in 1649.
Carisbrooke Castle was the scene of part of this story, one of many such sites where key
events in Britain's constitutional history took place in this region. Because of this we
have put up a separate webpage describing sites like Carisbrooke and the role they played,
and another page telling the story of the two main events that have caught the public imagination
ever since, both of which occurred locally. On our sister site, on local media, we also have
a page outlining the various local-interest novels and film-tv dramas set in the period (such
as Children Of The New Forest).
17th Century Sites Of Historical
Interest: An Introduction To Sites You Can Visit
On The Trail Of The
Galloping Cavaliers -The 'Royal Flight' Episodes Of 1651 And 1685
Setting
The Scene In Wessex: The 17th Century In Literature And Drama
South
Downs National Park,
Butser Hill National Nature Reserve
England's newest National Park was officially opened today [April 1st,
2011]. The new South Downs National Park extends eastward beyond our own south-central coverage
area, but the western end is adjacent to our own regional gateway for visitors from London
etc: St Catherine's Hill overlooking Winchester. Our main photo, above, was taken looking
westward from the new Park’s highest point, Butser Hill National Nature Reserve [270m /886
ft], which stands near its western end, within Hampshire’s largest protected (yew and beech)
woodland, Queen Elizabeth Country Park.
Here on 1st April, says the Guardian, from the top of this steep, flat-topped grassy escarpment
you may be able to hear church bells in all directions in the distance, ringing out in acclamation.
Perhaps the celebration is one of relief that the long political and bureaucratic struggle
(over 100 organisations campaigned for a decade over policy details) is over. For the Park
has been a lifetime in the offing, the last of the 12 areas from the original list of candidates
proposed in 1947, when the (originally American) idea of National Parks was first mooted,
and has been actively debated since 1999.
In any case, on a clear day you can see east and west over the western Weald, north over
southern Hampshire [pictured below], as well as southward to the Hampshire coast,
around Southampton, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. The presence of a replica prehistoric
conical thatched hut just below is appropriate, standing on the site of a Celtic Iron Age
settlement. (The main Iron Age replica farmstead, Butser
Ancient Farm, was relocated a mile south). As with all chalk-downland trackways, the
pathways along here are ancient, part of a prehistoric network of interconnecting long-distance
‘high road’ routes used by early travellers to avoid the woodlands below, where wolves and
other dangers lurked ....
The view from the north side of Butser Hill, inland over southern Hampshire.
St Catherine's Hill viewpoint
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
With Valentine's Day upon us, the press is full of features about things
to do and places to go for a romantic weekend. We can suggest none better for an outing in
this immediate area than a walk up St Catherine's Hill between Bournemouth and Christchurch.
(The main road access, the B3073
, runs down the west side of the hill, car park / access lane a quarter mile north of the
hospital.) It's still relatively unknown even locally, and has a somewhat mysterious history
(see our Notes & Queries feature, The
Mystery Of St Catherine's Hill, illustrated with photos taken in different seasons).
It's pleasantly wooded with pine trees, and at present there's a campaign to save it from
the Council's plans to deforest
it. It's thus less windswept than the open heathland the Council prefers, and hence walkable
year round, even during inclement winter weather. It has a labyrinth of paths, so that every
time you visit, you can take a different route and discover a new corner. There's little
danger of getting lost as you can re-orient yourself by looking at the view. There are so
many linked paths you can always discover a new corner or vista you haven't seen before.
The photo here shows the main viewpoint on the east side, from where you can see over the
Avon Valley to the New Forest and southeast to the Solent, the Isle Of Wight, and Christchurch
(the Priory tower is distinct). On the southern side is a viewpoint over Christchurch at
the highest point - hence the Ordnance Survey 'trig point' stone marker. The northeastern
corner looks up the Avon Valley towards the Bournemouth Airport flight path, so both private
and commercial aircraft are frequently seen on landing approach across the valley. From the
southwestern viewpoint you can see Bournemouth and the outline of the Purbeck Hills across
the bay.
Eype, West Dorset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The beach seen along here has been in the national news
this week [10-Jan-2011], due to the local Council listing it as being for sale for £1, or
best offer above that. Conservative-run West Dorset District Council explained
the £1 was just a simplified accounting convention since the beach doesn’t bring in any money,
but has associated maintenance costs, and the planned sale is part of the Council’s “asset
management plan.” The notion that a key beach on the Jurassic Coast (a World Heritage site
and major international tourism destination) should be sold for best offer over £1 on the
grounds it is not an asset bringing in any revenue may strike some as not so much simplified
accounting as simple-minded.
The beach is directly accessible at Eype Mouth, itself hidden here by the ravine containing
the tiny resort village of Eype. The name Eype means a steep place, and it is situated down
a steep single-lane roadway called Mount Lane, leading to a pub and an upmarket country hotel
refurbished since it became the resort of writers and artists in the 1930s. Many however
walk to it from along the Coast (in stages anyway) and Eype makes a handy stopover between
two better known landmarks on the route, which climbs up and down the downland atop the western
half of the fossil-rich clay and greensand cliffs of the Jurassic Coast. (Walking along the
beach itself can be difficult and dangerous, due to tides and cliff-falls.)
Below, in the distance you can see West Bay, the fishing port which made possible the town
of Bridport just inland, two centuries before it became what it is today - a well-to-do market
town with a strong artistic presence. Just beyond where the pier or jetty stands is the spot
seen in the opening credits and a key sequence in the 1970s BBC sitcom The Fall And Rise
Of Reginald Perrin, where Reggie fakes his suicide by stripping and swimming out to
sea. The footpath leads up from West Bay to Eype Mouth, and up (a short but steep climb)
the flank of Eype Down onto the scarped headland of Thorncombe Beacon, from where this photo
was taken. The path here is part of the Dorset Coast Path which now forms part of the longer
(Minehead to Swanage) South West Way as well as the designated Jurassic Coast route. Here,
the path is also briefly part of the official long-distance Monarch’s Way, commemorating
the route the future Charles II followed in 1651 when fleeing Roundhead forces and trying
to find a local ship’s captain who would take him cross Channel to safety.
Our viewpoint, Thorncombe Beacon is, at 157m / 515ft, the second-highest point on England’s
South Coast, and takes its designation from the fact there is a beacon here built in 1988
to commemorate the one erected in 1588 to be set alight if the Spanish Armada was sighted
(which it was, heading east, leading to a sea battle off Portland). The highest point on
the south coast is a kilometre or so farther west: Golden Cap [National Trust], at 191m /
617ft another viewpoint well worth the climb [see inset photo below of Thorncombe Beacon
seen from Golden Cap]. Farther to the west, beyond another tiny resort, Seatown [with
pub-restaurant], and then Charmouth [town, slightly inland] is Lyme Regis, an even bigger
tourism draw, and it is possible for those fit enough to walk all the way as a scenic daytrip
outing.
View
from Hardy Monument, West Dorset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The new hit
film just out, Tamara Drewe, based on a cult 2007 Guardian comic strip, was shot
at various locations in the West Dorset countryside. An article in the Telegraph
comments how when such scenic films create a surge of tourism interest, the experience of
visiting them does not always live up to expectations. Of course, it never will for anyone
expecting to see exactly what they saw on screen, but for anyone else, in this case it definitely
does. It was West Dorset’s “deep country” aspect that prompted the director to film it there
when the comic strip was set closer to Bournemouth, at locations ranging from Bridport near
the coast to Yetminster near Sherborne and the Somerset boundary. West of Dorchester, the
inland countryside changes from the flatter eastern half of Dorset to a landscape of rolling
downs where every turn in the road brings a different perspective, and there are many climbable
hills as viewpoints.
The view pictured above is from the Hardy Monument at Portesham, the first major inland
viewpoint beyond Dorchester [detour S off A35]. It is not named after the author of the “Wessex
Novels” like Far From The Madding Crowd (which also largely inspired Tamara
Drewe) but his naval namesake, Nelson’s flag officer of “Kiss me, Hardy” fame. This
Thomas Hardy was from the village of Portesham, and the 72ft (22m) Monument was erected in
his memory in 1844. It was recently repaired, and this summer the surrounding land seen here
was bought by Dorset County Council, for the purpose of “improving public access, creating
learning opportunities and promoting recreation such as walking, picnics and enjoying its
views and tranquillity - a source of inspiration for art and poetry." (Tamara Drewe,
pictured below, is set at a writers' retreat where writers are meant to draw inspiration
from staying in the area.)
Beyond, to the west, can be found farther hilltop viewpoints like Dorset's highest inland
point Pilsdon Pen, just above where the Romantic poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy
set up house in the 1790s.
Christchurch Harbour
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This year, the Dorset
Architectural Heritage Week of open days runs from 8-16 September. Sites include (in
no particular order) Hardy's Cottage, Weymouth (town walk), Blandford (town walk), Highcliffe
Castle, Christchurch River & Harbour Cruise, Lulworth Castle & Park, Mapperton House, Poundbury,
Christchurch Castle, Hengistbury Head, St Catherine's Hill, Clavell Tower, Clouds Hill Cottage,
and Corfe Castle. The programme can be downloaded from here
[PDF], with booking details here
[PDF].
However, the popularity of the annual DAHW scheme, whereby for a limited period the public
can enjoy guided visits to sites sometimes not otherwise accessible, has meant a change to
the booking system: it now includes a "draw" (as in drawing names from a hat). If you are
unable to book a site visit, you can still visit many of the sites for a DIY exploration,
with the help of info from guidebooks and/or the internet. With other sites you can visit
but without full access - often you can visit the grounds of a stately home, but not go inside;
or else you can go on a regular tour with the usual entry fee.
In fact, you can easily organise your own heritage-exploration altogether, there being no
shortage of other sites of interest in the vicinity. For example, pictured above is Christchurch
Harbour, and within easy walking distance are Christchurch Priory and Castle, and Hengistbury
Head, while not far away by car, Highcliffe Castle and St Catherine's Hill can also be visited.
You can use the Google Earth Map or the Multimap facility [see links in right-hand column]
for directions etc.
The
Somerset Levels From Glastonbury Tor
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The usual meaning of 'Somerset' given is people of The Summer Country, and the arrival of
fine summer weather makes the Tor a natural choice for a viewpoint, for on a fine day such
as this [July 9, 2010] one can see farther from here than anywhere in the region. With the
coming of summer, Glastonbury becomes an international tourism destination (outside of the
famous music festival held annually nearby).
By climbing the Tor, one can obtain a 360-degree over the entire region. Here the view is
towards the west, past the town. Glastonbury was an ancient port, the tidal reaches of the
Celtic Sea once reaching inland to here, at least as a winter flood plain. Some say this
winter flooding is the basis of the old Celtic name Ynys Witrin, or Isle of Glass, referring
to the reflective qualities of the surrounding water as a mirror - lakes being traditionally
entrances to the Celtic Otherworld. Another derivation of 'Somerset' is from Saxon somersetae,
'the settlers on the sea lakes', and archaeological digs have shown there was an Iron Age
lake village here, with houses on stilts. There were also settlements built on artificial
mounds in the manner of the Scots crannogs.
Later, land-reclamation schemes held back the sea's incursion over the Levels. The worst
occasion the Levels were completely flooded was in 1607, when giant waves crested the sea
walls, with around 2,000 people drowning before the water ebbed away ten days later. However
storms continued to breach the sea defences protecting this low-lying land until the 1920s,
when the defences were improved. The entire area is criss-crossed by large drainage ditches
to contain the surface water, though parts of the Levels still become flood plains in time
of heavy rains swelling the local rivers. The dried-out peat moor makes for rich grazing
and farming land. For centuries, unless there was high water, the Levels were largely impassable
swamp.
Nevertheless history is all around, concentrated mainly on the hillocks like the Tor which
offered defensive settlement sites from prehistoric times on, with sites linked by wooden
trackways and causeways across the swamp. The world's oldest known example of timbered walkway,
the Sweet Track, was found here. It was nearby to the SW, at the "Isle" of Athelney, that
Alfred was able to hide out in safety after his defeat by the Danes (this was where he supposedly
burnt the cakes he was meant to be watching). To the NE on a clear day, you can just make
out the tower of the cathedral at Wells, England's smallest city. The last pitched battle
on English soil, Sedgemoor in 1685, was fought nearby, and the descriptions of corpses lying
submerged in the swamp are said to have inspired the scene in Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings,
where the corpses try to drag Bilbo down.
Glastonbury itself is the focus of many legends about the first British church being founded
here by the disciple Joseph of Arimatheia sailing here when it was still a port. Supposedly
he planted his staff on Wearyall Hill [the ridge visible in the photo above, lower right],
and it sprouted into a Palestinian variety of thorn tree. He also supposedly brought with
him sacred Christian relics like the Grail which features in the Arthurian legends. A tomb
excavated in the Abbey grounds in 1991 is claimed to be the site of Arthur and Guenevere's
grave. This nexus of associated legends is the basis of much of the area's tourism [more
info here].
‘The
Coast With The Most’
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Bournemouth and Poole have a new joint tourism campaign for 2010, “The
Coast With the Most.” It has the tagline “Love Watersports, Love Bournemouth and
Poole,” which was evidently meant to tie in with the new artificial surf reef constructed
in Poole Bay off Boscombe Pier and new seafront development (which has just won a restoration
award). In the event, the surf reef completed in the autumn has proved somewhat underpowered
for the handful of keen year-round surfers [pictured] who promoted the idea, but
there are plenty of more general-interest attractions all along the coast. As BBC’s hit TV
series Coast demonstrated, Poole Harbour is so shallow that it is relatively safe
for beginners to learn water sports in, with various equipment-rental services for this.
And any definition of “The Coast With the Most” would have to include the Jurassic Coast,
which starts on the west side of Poole Bay just beyond the sands of Studland Bay, out of
shot on the left. Note that our photo, taken from Bournemouth Pier on a bright but breezy
March day, is not of the Boscombe–Eastcliff surf-reef side, but shows the Westcliff side,
with the Marriott-Highcliff Hotel above the cliff-face lift from the beach.
Sunset Over The New Forest
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The Anglo-Saxons called February Solmonath, the month of Sol the sun, commorating
the first sunny days of the year. This is the phenomenon referred to as 'false spring,' when
the first hardy green shoots appear, just before winter's last gasp. The first week of February
is also the start of spring in another sense. The halfway points between solstices and equinoxes
are known as cross-quarter days, and were marked by ancient festivals. The 5th/6th of Febrary
is the halfway mark between the midwinter solstice [21/22 Dec] and the spring equinox [21
March]. The former is the point when the nights rather than the days begin to get shorter,
and the latter the point when the days become as long as nights.
Thus one could argue this week is the start of the 90-day Spring season, with a wintery half
from now till around the March equinox, giving way to a warmer summery half of days longer
than nights. (At present, sunset is at 5pm, and sunrise at 7.40 am.) Around this time, the
Celtic calendar celebrated the festival of Imbolc (Oimelc in Old Irish).
This sounds like something to do with milk, which is apt: it means the in-filling of the
udders of the sheep and cattle, preparatory to the birth of their young in the spring. The
Imbolc/Oimelc festival may have begun each year only when this phenomenon (technically,
the lactation of ewes) was witnessed locally.
This is a variation on the American version of the ancient Anglo-Saxon cross-quarter day
of Candlemas, Groundhog Day (2 Feb), which German
settlers to America brought with them, changing the original proverbial animal (hedgehog)
for an American one. In both these, and other European versions, the presence or lack of
sunlight is used to to predict whether winter weather is over. The idea is if the hibernating
animal emerges, sees his own shadow and retreats again, it is a false spring, to be followed
by 6 or so more weeks of winter weather. (The 'scientific' explanation is that air temperature
and pressure are inversely related, with a rise in temp creating a low-pressure zone which
pulls in weather from other zones with higher pressure and thus lower temperatures.) As I
write, this effect is already descending upon us, with the forecast of another cold snap,
and no doubt, 6 more weeks of winter in general.
Full English Breakfast, Dorchester cafe
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
With the entire island of Britain in the grip of Arctic conditions this month, a photo of
icy roads, fields etc might seem de rigeur. But instead of one more such photo to add to
the tens of thousands already uploaded to personal and news sites, I thought we'd have something
different, a photo of what is most important to people in such times - hot meals. Although
the supermarkets are reportedly running out of bread, milk and other perishables due to delivery
slowdowns combined with panic buying, the cafes along the transport routes are still going,
providing vital breaks and comfort to the snowbound traveller. The 'Full English Breakfast'
is an English institution, a meal which can be had in B&Bs and some pubs as well as cafes
and restaurants, sometimes on an "all-day" basis. This may date back to author Somerset Maugham's
famous dictum, "To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day."
The standard shorthand for the ingredients is 'EBCB' or eggs, bacon, chips, and beans,
usually with toast or fried bread on the side. There will be fried tomatoes and perhaps mushrooms,
and these days a complete vegetarian version of the FEB is usually available. These meals
are often made using local produce where possible. This one is from a Dorchester cafe, but
wherever you find 'Full English Breakfast' listed, you'll find having one sets you up for
the whole day.
Winter Solstice Sundown, River Frome
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The week before the winter solstice and Xmas has brought genuine wintry weather, with freezing
rain, black ice, sleet, and fog resulting in a few traffic disasters. The winter solstice
[Dec 21/22] is when the sun is at a standstill (sunset and sunrise are the same time for
a period of 2-3 days), and the days are at their shortest before getting longer again. Archaeologists
now say (based on finds of the bones of pigs which would have born in the spring and when
killed were around 9 months old) that this was when the main rendezvous and feast occurred
at Stonehenge. They surmise this may have been the main feast of the year in pre-Christian
Britain. (For more on the ancient calendar, click here: The
Ancient Country Year.)
At the winter-solstice vigil at Stonehenge this year, it was reportedly too foggy to see
the sun come up or go down, but a few other days this past week have been cold and clear.
This view of the winter-solstice sunset over the River Frome was shot from Wareham Bridge
on just such a clear day, shortly before 6pm, when you can see the new moon rising in the
last afterglow of the sunset. As usual, it’s unlikely that we’ll get the proverbial ‘white
christmas’ the bookies take long odds on down here, but there were a few snow flurries on
the official solstice [Dec 21st], as seen in the image below, taken in Corfe Castle square
in front of the Greyhound Inn, which we’ve covered before as England’s most photographed
pub.
Arne
Peninsula, Poole Harbour
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The Arne Peninsula, on the southern edge of Poole Harbour, is not well-known, but has been
in the local news lately. This was part of November's Remembrance Day events, in commemoration
of its wartime role as a night-time 'bombing decoy' ground, to lure the Luftwaffe into bombing
it instead of Poole across the Harbour - or the Holton Heath cordite factory nearby. Tar
barrels, troughs of petrol and the like were set alight to simulate the appearance of a city
or factory on fire, leading the bombers to drop their bombs there without loss of life.
The peninsula was chosen as it was largely uninhabited, the few villagers being evacuated
in 1942. A few returned after the war, and the small church remains intact today, though
without electricity. Its mix of heathland and salt-marsh makes it is unsuitable for building
on, and so the area remains undeveloped, declared a nature reserve in 1954. It is a suitable
habitat for marsh-birds, with an RSPB bird-watching hide by a lagoon on the edge of the harbour,
where you can study various wading birds. Deer also find it congenial, and one can also see
small herds in the oak and pine scrub woodland of the 9-acre Big Wood around harbour's edge.
The RSPB, who have had responsibility for the area since 1966, have put in a car park on
the village road (off the A351 Wareham-Corfe-Swanage road) which runs across Hartland Moor.
From the car park, you can stroll down past the church to the viewpoint at Shipstal Point,
where an anti-aircraft battery and command post once stood amidst the heather. From the viewpoint
one can look out over the harbour [see below], with Poole port visible to the north
and Brownsea and the smaller islands to the east, by the entrance to the Harbour between
Sandbanks and Studland. Walking down to the harbour shore, one can just glimpse, to the south,
the grey ruined towers of Corfe Castle on its mound in the Corfe gap in the Purbeck coast
downs.
Arne remains undeveloped and almost undisturbed, the wartime bomb craters now ponds where
wildlife flourishes. Sir Arthur Mee, in his The King's England volume on Dorset, commented
that "it has the beauty that is worth living for. No one is ever tired of walking to
Arne. " He concludes his entry: "Not far from the church the lane runs out to a
point where men raised the great mound for their dead in the Long Ago; this and the church
are all that man has made that is notable in Arne." One theory about the name Arne is
that it is from the Saxon aerne, 'secret place', and this would certainly be apt.
Avebury Stone Face
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This being
Hallowe’en weekend, with the media focusing on spooky subjects, I thought this image might
make a more appropriate local-interest choice than the usual ghosts etc. In most such cases,
you can only read about others reporting strange phenomena, but at Avebury you can see for
yourself, walk among the prehistoric megaliths, and decide whether or not the stones are
actually hewn into faces. If so, what do they represent? Visitors claim they can see faces
on many of the stones, with some vaguely human and others distinctively animal-shaped - as
shown below [hold mouse over image].
Avebury is part of the same UNESCO World Heritage Site as Stonehenge, which some claim also
has faces carved on it, though this is harder to verify as ordinary visitors cannot get close
to the stones. Stonehenge has long been regarded, by UNESCO officials, Parliamentary committees
and others, as a heritage-management disgrace. It is sandwiched between two busy roads [pictured
below], surrounded by chain-link fencing to make sure no one gets close without paying,
and a concrete pedestrian underpass for the site’s paying visitors (nearly a million a year),
who then find the stone circle itself is still out of bounds, to protect it from damage.
(Though if you pay a group fee, English Heritage will let you in among the stones – as you
can see from many a film. After many years of bitter access-protest battles with the police
closing the roads at the summer solstice, EH also lets up to a thousand of celebrants conduct
all-night solstice getogethers for free.) Now,
with the 2012 Olympic games including events on the coast down here as well as in London,
the government has decided to act, backing a £25 million plan to turf over the A344 road
leading to the coach and car park, and build a prefab visitor centre with larger car park
near Amesbury, with ‘shuttles’ (probably land trains) taking visitors back and forth.
This is an alternative to earlier schemes over the past two decades, culminating - after
£38 million was spent on consultation fees for aborted schemes - in a plan last year to replace
the A303 main road by excavating a sort of mini Channel Tunnel under Salisbury Plain -- not
surprisingly dropped as too expensive, at £500 million-plus.) Avebury meanwhile, remains
in care of the National Trust,
who let visitors walk within the stone circle, which is larger and older than Stonehenge.
Last Days Of Summer, Poole Harbour [click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Often
in England, the autumn weather is sunnier than it was in the summertime. After the promised
“BBQ summer” failed to appear, the press have been headlining a “BBQ autumn,” with ‘unseasonal’
sunny weather offering a final opportunity for outdoors pursuits. The south-central coast
is a boating playground – hence the decision to hold the marine events for the 2012 olympic
summer games here. Poole Harbour in particular is a natural marine playground – shallow,
yet almost the largest natural harbour around (98 miles in circumference). Most of the northern
side is now a yachting haven, new shoreline housing developments having their own private
marinas with mooring areas and slipways. The summer-only residents have gone home by now,
leaving the harbour relatively quiet. Local boat owners however can enjoy these last glory
days of summer, before autumn gales force them to stow sails and batten down the hatches.
For now, harbour waters are calm and still, the only waves from the wake of passing power
boats, often pulling waterskiers. Overall, the appearance is almost that of a painting. Here,
in the background along the shore at Hamworthy can be glimpsed one of the newer harbour-shore
developments at right, with the more traditional type of British seashore structure at left
– the beach hut.
This is just west of Poole Quay, and proceeding westward from here, the main channel passes
Poole Yacht Club marina and, next to the Royal Marines base at Hamworthy, the new Moriconium
Quay marina development [pictured below].
Along here is
the area known simply as Lake, where Vespasian’s Roman legions set up their first mainland
foothold. Westward are the sandhills of Ham Common and Rockley Sands development and holiday
park. Beyond Lytchett Bay, the channel turns southwest, between Holton Heath to the north
and the almost completely unspoilt Arne peninsula on the south or Purbeck side, leading up
the Frome towards Wareham via a meandering route through an extensive reed-marsh at the river
mouth [below].
Gold
Hill, Shaftesbury
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
English Heritage’s Architectural Heritage Week Open Days are here again, with hundreds
of sites not normally accessible to the public opened up for free, often with bookable guided
tours available. (Year-round, many of these are normally only open limited hours, or do not
offer guided tours, or are not free.) The scene shown above for instance is a public site,
and indeed is a famous postcard view. (Yes, it’s the one in the old Hovis ads.) But the adjoining
ruined Abbey whose buttresses can be see on the right of the picture normally has limited
public access. Abbey Park Walk viewpoint [pictured below] over Blackmore Vale to
the south is open 365 days a year as a public promenade, but the Abbey ruins behind are walled
off.
Shaftesbury Abbey, with its Royal Nunnery going back to Alfred the Great, was Britain’s foremost
women-only abbey, and the grounds now contain a museum and garden. The hilltop town was both
a market town and a pilgrimage site (King Canute supposedly died here kneeling in front of
the tomb of an earlier sainted king) and, besides the Abbey and Gold
Hill Museum, is rich in historic buildings, with a dozen blue plaques. Dorset’s Architectural
Heritage Week actually lasts 9 days [Sep 12-20], with listing and booking details available
here for this and other guided
tours and visits. (If you miss the DAHW event, or just want to visit the town for an independent
tour, a downloadable PDF showing a town heritage walk, together with another for the Abbey
grounds, can be found here.)
The
Osmington White Horse
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This famous Dorset landmark, carved on the Coast Downs in or before 1808 to commemorate
George III’s stays at Weymouth, is in the news this week. The story is that a 2-day makeover
of the Osmington White Horse, done for a TV ‘challenge’ show, was botched. In September 1989,
BBC’s ‘Challenge Anneka’ tasked presenter Anneka Rice and several local Scouts with making
the rather overgrown figure show up better. Tons of white Portland stone chippings were brought
in to dress the exposed limestone, which is more greyish-purple than white. This was 20 years
ago, and in the last few years, the hasty makeover has succumbed to age, leaving the carving
looking rather grotty-looking, due to uneven placement, slippage and weathering. The photo
above is one I took over 5 years ago, on a sunny day in July '04, and can be compared with
more recent ones in the press [Daily Mail story here]
or on Wikipedia,
which show the deterioration since then.
The 280 by 323 ft figure is now to be restored by the County Council and The Georgian Group
preservation charity, to its original state as much as possible. The Portland stone chippings
are to be removed, and the ground re-scoured, after a geophysical survey and a study of older
photos, for which they have put out a call. For 2 centuries now, it has been an established
landmark on the hills overlooking Weymouth’s eastern approach road [A353], past Osmington
village [OS Grid Ref SY717842] [map].
The fact the King is shown facing east - and thus riding away from Weymouth
– gave rise to spurious local folktales that this was why the king never returned to see
it, and that the bookseller who had sketched out its construction (supposedly paid for by
Admiral Nelson’s brother) committed suicide as a result of his blunder. In fact, there are
many white horses in the hillsides of Wessex, and there are hints the existing carving supplants
an older one, to which a human figure was added some 2 centuries or so ago, representing
the King – or the Duke of Wellington, or even Lord Nelson. It is the only known white horse
carrying a rider.
Mudeford
Sandbank, dividing Christchurch Harbour and Bay, from Hengistbury Head
[right-click to view or download full-size version]
The 2012 Summer
Olympic & Para-Olympic Games are being held not only in London, but down here as well, along
the coast between Portland and here.
The sailing events will be held off Portland, but Christchurch Bay will be used for competitor
training and practice. Because of the income the Games are expected to bring
to the locality, certain key areas are being upgraded. The coast esplanade, just visible
beyond the line of beach huts, is to be refurbished, to quote BBC News [27 Aug 09], with
a “new beach access track and areas for sailors and watersports people to store and launch
their craft.”
The esplanade in question is known as the Gundimore Promenade, after a house that was the
centre of a literary-minded group of people who helped make the vicinity fashionable in the
early 19th Century, when it was little more than a wasteland frequented by smugglers. (See
our feature The Forgotten Regency
Resort.) In fact, only a year before the gentry first arrived in 1785, there had been
a 3-hour battle here, involving snipers and cannon, between His Majesty’s Forces and up to
two hundred smugglers and their accomplices. After the area’s major landowner, Sir George
Rose MP and his son the poet William Stewart Rose, built seaside villas here, they began
inviting cultured acquaintances such as Sir Walter Scott and future Poet Laureate Robert
Southey to stay at Gundimore and adjacent summer cottages. These are still visible from Gundimore
Promenade, pictured below, looking towards Mudeford Quay, with Mudeford Sandbank and Hengistbury
Head visible in the background. 
Hengistbury itself is not only a viewpoint, but an Ancient Monument popular with
locals and visitors, and there was such an outcry when the closure of its activities centre
was announced this spring that the Council was forced to rethink its plans. Mudeford Sandbank
also attracts much interest as it is one of the few sites where you are allowed to sleep
in your beach hut, and the record prices and high ground rents reflect this. A mile east
down the beach is Highcliffe, where retired Prime Minister Lord Bute bought an estate and
built a house to “command the finest outlook in England.” The present Highcliffe
Castle, now open to the public, was a replacement built in 1835 for Bute’s original manor
house, which was lost to cliff erosion by 1794.
Red Arrows Departing, Poole Bay [click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Said to be the largest event of its kind in the UK, the 2nd Bournemouth Air Festival [20-23
Aug 2009] drew record crowds of over 300,000 a day, and over a million altogether. There
were aerobatics displays by helicopters, biplane and monoplane prop planes and jets, and
ground events like a simulated beach landing by the Royal Marines, and evening fireworks.
(An over-promoted 'world-record' show on the first evening got bad publicity in the national
press for being a fizzle.) The 4-day show's aerial 'stars' were the RAF's Battle Of Britain
Memorial Flight of 3 WWII planes (a Spitfire, a Hurricane and a Lancaster), the RAF's newest
fighter the Eurofighter Typhoon, a restored Avro Vulcan delta-wing nuclear bomber (a no-show
in 08), and of course, the perennial favourite, the RAF Red Arrows aerobatics team. This
photo, taken from Bournemouth's Eastcliff at 4pm on Saturday, Day 3, shows the Red Arrows
flying off into the late-afternoon haze and cloud, watched by a crowd estimated by police
at 340,000, including an 'armada' of nearly a thousand boats moored offshore.
Red Arrows over Bournemouth Gardens
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The 2nd Bournemouth Airshow, Thurs 20th - Sun 23rd August, again stars the RAF Red Arrows, who open and close the 4-day event. There are dozens of other attractions - the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, an RAF Eurofighter Typhoon, the last airworthy Avro Vulcan nuclear bomber, a Sea Vixen, a US WW2 P51 Mustang long-range fighter, with various helicopters performing aerobatics as well as the range of prop and jet planes. In the Central Gardens in the evenings is a 'Night Air' entertainments programme, with hot air balloons, fireworks displays, a Royal Marines band, laser show etc. (Last year's show was attended by an estimated 750,000, so any visit needs planning. For schedule of main highlights, click here.)
View From Hod Hill
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Hillforts are
Dorset’s key inland ‘viewpoint’ features. For anyone ready, willing and able to take a hike
up them and then around their perimeter rampart, they offer 360-degree views over Dorset’s
varied landscape panorama. In fact, the stem of the names Dorset and Dorchester (Roman Durnovaria)
may derive from that of the builders of dozens of these ‘multivallate’ [i.e. multiple walls
and banks] hillforts - the Celtic Durotriges tribe, thought to mean “wall artificers.”
The walls are giant earthen ramparts [pictured in foreground] with ditches large
enough to be railway cuttings, and have survived twenty five centuries of erosion, unlike
the timber palisades that stood atop them. In times of hostile incursion, they could hold
thousands of people together with their flocks and herds, on a temporary basis (drinking
water being the problem). The Roman campaign of AD 43 led by future emperor Vespasian classed
them as oppida, translated as tribal towns. Vespasian’s legions had to conquer over
twenty of them, necessitating the use of siege engines firing giant ballista bolts.
Though not the highest (at 150m /490ft), Hod Hill [OS Landranger #194 map grid ref ST854/105],
5 km NW of Blandford Forum, overlooking the Stour and Iwerne valleys and Blackmore Vale,
is classed as Dorset’s largest hillfort, at 22 hectares (54 acres). (Others like Hambledon
Hill just to the W, and Maiden Castle S of Dorchester are close contenders.) This may have
been why Hod Hill became the only one known to have a Roman garrison fort built inside it.
(During a recent Dorset Architectural Heritage Week, guides were dressed as Roman legionaries.)
Today, it’s open to the public courtesy of the National Trust [small car park alongside Child
Okeford/A350 back road, with footpath leading up to NE corner].
Empty Deckchairs, South Coast
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This shot,
with its ranks of empty deckchairs and unused BBQ, is a typical scene these days, given the
continuing vagaries of English summer weather. (The Met Office had mistakenly predicted a
"BBQ summer.") After the June heatwave (as the papers like to say, Phew, what a
scorcher) - as ever followed by a period of stormy weather - we've returned to normal English
summer weather. This means even when the sun shines, it never gets hot, due to the strong
afternoon breezes. It might seem that another English tradition - gazing at the sea for hours
- is sadly dying away. But while the Councils who charge for deckchair hire might feel this
way, contributing to the abandonment of the traditional deckchair holiday is no doubt the
increased range of attractions and activities available. There are more and more these every
year, here on the Jurassic Coast, even if you
just want to gaze out to sea. As they used to say in the old travel books, views of great
interest abound.
Burton Bradstock beach and Hive Beach Café [click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Though England has just enjoyed more than the proverbial 'two fine days and a thunderstorm'
that make up a typical English summer (with a heatwave lasting well over a week), the return
of more typical unsettled weather has made planning a holiday outing problematic. However
even if going to the beach for a suntan is not an option, Dorset's Jurassic Coast offers
all-weather outdoors pursuits. Even on a rainy day, a favourite activity is a 'bracing' walk
along the seashore, inevitably followed by a hot meal at a nearby café or inn. A particularly
popular rendezvous for this, year-round, is the Hive
Beach Café at the western end of Chesil Bank near Burton Bradstock in West Dorset. The
seaside café/bakery/ice cream parlour has regularly won awards, most recently Coast magazine's
2009 Award for Best Coastal Café/Pub/Restaurant, and the Times shortlist [4-7-09] of Britain's
top-ten fish-n-chip outlets. The seafood menu is sourced where possible from Lyme Bay, of
which the café environs offer an impressive view, a walk along the bluffs being a must before
or (usually) after a meal. (As Dorset-resident TV chef Lesley Waters puts it, "You get
a big bowl of fish soup with really good bread, then walk it off on the beach.")
Coy Pond, Poole
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The fuss in
the national press about the MP who claimed on his expenses a floating “duck house” for his
Hampshire estate has made anything to do with the topic newsworthy. In fact, many old estates
had duck ponds, often with a “duck island” to prevent foxes getting the ducklings. These
were known as Decoy Ponds or Coy Ponds (nothing to do with the koi carp who also now often
reside in them), as they were used to ‘decoy’ migratory water-birds like ducks down, so they
could be netted or shot. Wooden - now plastic – decoy ducks were moored to lure unsuspecting
birds into seeing it as safe to land there.
Some of the newer municipalities like Bournemouth who took over these former estate lands
turned the ponds into public amenities, the ducks becoming ornamental attractions, rather
than game for the pot. Floating duck houses are sometimes used where the pond is too small
for a duck island, as in the pond at Muccleshell village (Throop) in north Bournemouth [pictured].
When Bournemouth’s original Decoy Pond (which stood where the War Memorial is today) had
to be filled in, a new one was created, at the top of the Central Gardens, just over the
boundary in Poole. Not seen in the main image is a life-size painted model heron [see
below] recently fixed in the pond bed to keep away the real grey heron who has been
visiting for many years, and who can still nonetheless be seen from time to time on the wooded
island.
Worbarrow, Jurassic Coast
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Worbarrow Bay
and Worbarrow Tout [a Celtic term for a sacred headland], photographed from Flowers Barrow
hill fort. This is a spot which made the news this weekend. The arrival of summer weather
has brought thousands to the coast, which in turn keeps the Portland Coastguard helicopter
and the RNLI lifeboats busy
rescuing people. The news coverage was because spectators atop the Tout refused to move out
the way, preventing the Coastguard helicopter from winching a crewman directly down to where
a man and a girl were stuck on the cliff. (The pair had tried to climb up the Tout from the
footpath along the side.) The helicopter had to lower the winchman and traverse him along
the cliff. You can’t see it in the thumbnail version, but if you examine the desktop size
image, you’ll see the end of the incident, the Coastguard helicopter sidling up to the bayshore
to drop the pair safely onto the beach. The coast here is popular as it is accessed via another
attraction, the ruined [now preserved] village of Tyneham [see our Scenic
Ruins page].
The
Isle of Portland
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Portland is
where the sailing events will be held for the 2012 Summer Olympics. A National Sailing Academy
is currently being built here, on the NE corner of the peninsula, by the site of the former
RNAS heli-port, part of a £400m development programme to include a marina and luxury spa
hotel. Portland Harbour beyond was long the southern port of the Home Fleet, but was largely
abandoned in the 1990s after the Cold War ended. To the left, the Chesil Bank enclosing the
Fleet Lagoon stretches away NW into the distance. (The Fleet was where the Dam Busters bouncing
bomb was tested – it’s actual footage of the 1942 Fleet test drops you see in the 1954 film,
currently being remade). The Queen and Prince Philip will pay a visit to the Sailing Academy
in June. Weymouth [in the distance, right] is the resort King George III sojourned at during
several summers to help cure his madness, first making the idea of the seaside resort fashionable
in polite society. The royal couple will also visit the Tank
Museum at Bovington near Dorchester, redeveloped with the help of £16.5m in Heritage
Lottery Funding, and being officially reopened by the Queen the same day, June 11th.
Osborne House, Isle Of Wight
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This seems a timely choice as the film Young Victoria (on current release and coming
out on DVD), has made many aware of the Queen's early happy married life. Victoria had spent
youthful seaside holidays on Wight, at Norris Castle near Cowes, having begun her popular
'Royal Progress' trip of 1833 by yacht along the Dorset-Devon coast here. After she became
Queen, she and Albert bought up the Osborne estate next to Norris Castle, and had their own
'marine palace' built overlooking The Solent. It was designed in the then-fashionable Italianate
style as the Solent view [pictured below] reminded Albert of the Bay Of Naples.
The Italianate design would give the place some of the appeal of a sunny Mediterranean resort.
The Georgian manor house was rebuilt in Palladian style, including campanile towers,
a loggia balcony, and pavilion. Terraced gardens with statues and fountains in Renaissance
style cascaded down towards the seashore, where Victoria had her own bathing machine.
The result was so attractive that the 'Osborne Style' would be imitated in Britain, Europe,
and the USA. It was suitably secluded. Osborne was guarded at times by up to 200 soldiers
(and of course her fierce Highland gillie John Brown) who kept tourists as well as anarchists
out. (Her new Poet Laureate, Tennyson, also set up a home on Wight, near what is now Tennyson
Down, but was soon besieged by tourists.)
She remained there after Albert died, dying there herself in 1901. Her later life at Osborne
was seen in the 1997 film Mrs Brown, starring Judi Dench as an older, widowed Victoria.
The couple's, and later their son's, interest in yachting, with a 'Royal Yachting Squadron,'
established the Cowes Regatta as an annual event
(1st week August 2009). It being a tradition that Royal princes should serve a stint in the
'Senior Service,' Osborne became in part a Royal Naval College where future kings served
as cadets. Osborne later became a major tourist attraction, now kept by English
Heritage as much as possible as it was when Victoria died there.
Pub
Meal In Spring Sunshine
[right-click on image to download full-size version]
The
recent ‘Arctic’ (for England, that is) weather has been documented by tens of thousands of
images of snowy or frosty winter scenes uploaded to various websites. As we had already posted
a bleak-midwinter scene (the Stonehenge silhouette, below) last time, I decided this time
we should look ahead to Spring, whose first rays and shoots are just now becoming apparent.
The sure sign of Spring having fully arrived is when you are able to go for an alfresco pub
lunch, sitting outside in the garden of a country inn: this popular rite of passage is surely
the real test of winter’s finally being over. Well, we’re not at that stage quite yet, but
to cheer us all up here’s an alfresco pub meal from last year, taken in the garden of the
Scott Arms overlooking Corfe Castle. The pub has often been used by TV crews (there are souvenir
stills in the hallway inside), and I think even film director turned food critic Michael
Winner would have approved of this fare. In case you can’t tell, the two meals were bacon,
eggs, & chips with onion rings, and bangers & mash with a side-order of grilled tomatoes,
and of course the view over the Purbeck Hills is great. For a panoramic view taken from this
same pub garden, see the page on our sister site The
Isle Of Purbeck On Screen.
Stonehenge
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Stonehenge
in silhouette is our chosen image to portray the midwinter period. For recent archaeological
research suggests Midwinter sunset, and not Midsummer sunrise (when the largest crowds now
gather every year) was the key date in its use in ancient times. Its central "avenue" is
aligned to the solstices at each end (21 June and 21 December). But analysis of pig bones
found in pits nearby indicates the main prehistoric feast was in December. It would thus
be a celebration of the passing of the shortest day (and longest night) - and thus the lengthening
of the days again towards the spring equinox (21 March), when days and nights are of equal
length. This in turn is the halfway point to the start of another summer at the festival
anciently called Beltane, and later May Day.
Ruins
of St Andrew's Church and Rufus Castle, Portland
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Autumn is the
season of mixed weather, with crisp sunny days giving way to rainy ones, and misty weather
in between. Due to its topography, Portland is one of those places that acquires a dramatic
and mysterious quality in misty weather, with unusual features suddenly looming up at you
out of the fog. Here, a double ruin overlooks Church Ope Cove, on the E side of Portland.
In the foreground stands the ruin of St Andrew's Church, and above in the background, ruined
Rufus Castle.
Last week, BBC4 did a programme in its Railway Walks series on walking the old Weymouth-Portland
Railway down to the Cove. For what was the Victorian passenger and goods steam line and the
connecting horse-drawn tram line (built to convey stone from local quarries) is now a designated
walking and cycling route, The Rodwell Trail. This leads S around 2.5 miles from Weymouth
past another ruin, Sandsfoot Castle, and the new Olympic sailing-event base, down the eastern
side of the peninsula. (There is a proposal to re-convert most of the trackbed into a modern
light railway for the 2012 Olympics.) From there you can continue on, as the programme did,
to Church Ope Cove, between Rufus Castle and Pennsylvania Castle manor house built c1800.
There are more details about the site in our page on Scenic
Ruins.
Lymington Market stall
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This photo,
taken at Lymington Market in October, was chosen as this is traditionally the time of year
when plentiful health-giving food is celebrated as part of what are termed harvest festivals.
Although America’s national November holiday of Thanksgiving was established by the early
Puritan colonists, many of whom came from this region, it is not officially observed in Britain.
This is despite the fact that other forms of harvest festival, like the Harvest Home Supper
depicted in Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd, were never officially adopted as
national holidays. What is still alive, and becoming more popular yearly, is the phenomenon
of the farmer’s market or local produce market, usually set up by the food producers themselves,
but now promoted as a visitor attraction. Most of these events are in the summer for obvious
reasons, but some markets run throughout the year.
This region in particular has a considerable variety of local-produce market. Dorset Food
Week, designed to introduce people to local produce, ends today [Nov 2nd], but for anyone
who has acquired a taste for local produce, whether vegetarian or carnivorous, there are
food markets every week of the year. Within a 50 mile radius of the main population centre
(Bournemouth-Poole-Christchurch) in the area we cover, there are markets all around, in the
New Forest (Hampshire), Dorset, and Wiltshire. The Wiltshire Farmers' Markets Association
alone puts on around 130 markets a year. The New Forest Local Producers' Market runs mainly
in the summer and each Sunday rotates venues - Fordingbridge, Ringwood, Lyndhurst, Beaulieu,
Brockenhurst, etc. Some markets in larger population centres like Lymington are able to run
through the winter as well. Farmers’ markets are often held on traditional weekly, biweekly
or monthly market days e.g. Salisbury Market on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month,
but always check the relevant websites for details: (Note that you have to search these sites
as the listings are not static but updated each time from databases.)
Dorset: www.dorsetforyou.com
New Forest: www.forestfriendlyfarming.org.uk
Wiltshire: www.wiltshirefarmersmarkets.org.uk
National: (this searchable site includes a Microsoft Virtual-Earth-Map reproduction,
with locations in each county indicated by pins which also show dates): www.farmersmarkets.net
Rainy
Bournemouth seafront
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
“July
had been blown out like a candle by a biting wind that ushered in a leaden August sky. A
sharp, stinging drizzle fell, billowing into opaque grey sheets when the wind caught it.
Along the Bournemouth sea-front the beach-huts turned blank wooden faces towards a greeny-grey,
frothchained sea that leapt eagerly at the cement bulwark of the shore.” The
opening lines of Gerald Durrell's 1956 My Family And Other Animals could have been
written this year, and make for a fitting image to commemorate a wet summer giving way to
autumn rains. The beach-huts mentioned are a historic feature, the Council claiming in a
new book
to have pioneered the beach hut 100 years ago, in 1908. (Since then, the beach hut has become
a national institution, an alternative to sitting in a damp seafront shelter during the rainy
weather which is increasingly a feature of the British summer.) Over 50 of what the Council
says will be “the best beach huts in the world” are currently being developed,
ranging from luxury penthouse “super beach huts” down to single “surfer
pods”, to tie in with the £2.68m surf reef
(“the first artificial surf reef in the northern hemisphere”) now being
built on the far side of the town's 2nd Pier, Boscombe Pier, which is also being refurbished.
Salisbury Cathedral Cloisters
[click to view or right-click to download full-size version]
This year, Salisbury Cathedral is celebrating the 750th anniversary of its completion and
dedication, in 1258. The Cathedral has the tallest spire, at 404', in England (some claim
in all of Europe), but it's been difficult to get a classic exterior shot for some time,
as the façade has been shrouded in scaffolding. English Heritage rejected a £1.3m grant application
for extensive restoration to its crumbling masonry, as it will pay only for essential work
on an ongoing ad-hoc basis, which means an endless cycle of temporary repairs.
It's also government policy to keep museums free, administrators having belatedly realised
visitor numbers fall off when admission goes from free to £5. Many of the Church of England's
12,200 listed buildings are in the red, and earlier this year the Telegraph this year launched
a "Save Our Churches" online
petition (Last Xmas, I put up a 2008 calendar as a printable PDF file on the theme of
the smaller country churches that tend to get ignored besides the high-profile "great churches"
like the Cathedral, still available to download here
.)
Now, a report backed by Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber called 'Sacred Britain' has recommended
marketing initiatives be established e.g. to "publicise the role of churches in genealogy
to the thousands of Americans expected for the 2012 Olympic Games in London." Salisbury
Cathedral installed an entry turnstile where you would hand over a "voluntary donation" ,
and they also tell you the amount you should give (on their website
it's £5 per adult and £12 for families). They also had 'formal' admission charges during
750th Anniversary events like the Flower Festival in the summer, but this is now over. It's
also less crowded now school has re-started, but with other "Salisbury Cathedral 750" events
ending September 30th, it'll soon be last chance to see the historic exhibit in its inner
sanctum, the Cloisters courtyard shown in the downloadable image above.
Lancaster's Farewell Flypast, Bournemouth Air Show 2008
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The image above
was taken Sunday 31st August, on the final afternoon of the first Bournemouth Airshow, when
the weather was closing in. It shows the final fly-past over Bournemouth beach of an Avro
Lancaster bomber. A type made famous byThe Dam Busters, the Lanc had performed every
day at the Airshow together with a Spitfire and a Hurricane as part of the Battle Of Britain
Memorial Flight. Despite the weather, the Airshow attracted an estimated three-quarters of
a million spectators, and is to be repeated next year.
Fleet
Chapel, SW Dorset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This is the
only remnant [OS map ref SY634805] of a hamlet left by a storm surge mentioned in JM
Falkner’s smuggling novel Moonfleet, which is set in the vicinityy. In 1824, the
sea breached Chesil Bank and overflowed the Fleet Lagoon within, sweeping away the village
and the rest of what was their parish church. What you see is actually the old chancel, since
maintained for use as a chapel, on the site of the lost village of Fleet. A new parish church
( a larger Gothic Revival church, Holy Trinity) was built in 1827 a quarter-mile northwest,
closer to the present village.
It’s chosen here as one of the items on show for Dorset
Architectural Heritage Week. This is an annual event run since 1994 by the environmental-education
charity East Dorset Heritage Trust. Scheduled to coincide with national Civic Trust Heritage
Open Days, it “aims to stimulate public awareness of Dorset's rich architectural and
cultural heritage by allowing free access to many properties that are normally closed to
the public or charge for entry.” Examples of sites on show are Maiden Castle (Iron Age
hill-fort), Christchurch Priory (England’s longest parish church), St Catherine's Hill (mystery
site - see our web
page on it), Poundbury (Prince Charles’s designer heritage village), Christchurch Castle
(mediaeval ruin), Highcliffe Castle (19th-C manor house), and Roman Dorchester.
This year DAHW runs from September 13th to 21st. Some tours are limited as to numbers, and
need to be booked in advance. The deadline for EDHT receiving booking forms back by post,
15th August, is within two weeks of the programme being issued, before most people have seen
it, so the bookable-ticketed events are obviously very popular. Luckily, there are plenty
of events that allow you just to turn up. Full, printable programme here [a PDF, right-click
to download]
Dorset
Architectural Heritage Week 2008 Programme
View From Beer Head, SE Devon
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The photo above,
taken last month (in late June), shows how seaside resort and dramatic natural features are
juxtaposed along the Jurassic Coast.
In the downloadable fullsize version, you can see the resort of Seaton, and the once-important
port (later silted up) of Axmouth just beyond. Around the mouth of the Axe estuary are cliffs
of red 'Devon' sandstone, contrasting with the white chalk seen elsewhere (e.g. left foreground).
The wooded undercliff in the distance, now a Nature Reserve, was created by a massive landslip
in 1839.
Just around the far headland, the woodland continues as the Undercliff featured in
The French Lieutenant's Woman. Although the name Beer Head does not derive from the
fishing port of Beer's smuggling heyday (it's from Saxon bere, a wood), behind
this viewpoint are massive quarry caves dating back to Roman times, used in building many
English cathedrals, by smugglers, and more recently, as a film and TV location (e.g. Harbour
Lights with Nick Berry).
Knowlton Church and Ring, East Dorset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The ruin of
this mediaeval church, built deliberately inside a prehistoric 'pagan' sacred site, makes
a suitable choice for National Archaeology
Week 2008, which begins today (12th July). NAW runs for 9 days (this could only happen
in England), when selected archaeological sites (including current 'digs') are open to visitors,
and there are special educational museum exhibits. However, as with the Architectural Heritage
Weeks in September, only a few sites in each county are open, and the more interesting ones
are not on the list. Knowlton, near Cranborne in east Dorset, is an example of such a neglected
site, one you can walk around freely (in both senses). For more info on this site and others
of interest here, see our webpage on the Top
Ten Scenic Ruins In The Region.
The
Stour At Midsummer
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
High summer
has finally arrived in England, with July 1st the hottest day of the year so far. I chose
this as a suitable high-summer scene, the sort Victorian landscape painters would have selected
as an idyllic vista. (There's a romantic if dubious legend of a local noble fleeing across
here after the death of King William Rufus in August 1100 AD in the New Forest in an odd
"hunting accident." Later it was a smugglers' route. )
It shows a footbridge over a tributary over the River Stour, called the Leaden Stour, between
Hurn and Throop. Earlier, the river was crossed here by a carriage ford leading to Pig Shoot
Lane. This ford was always dangerous for foot travellers, hence the modern concrete footbridge.
Hurn is now the site of Bournemouth International Airport. Throop, the site of a mediaeval
mill (now an empty shell) is a northern suburb of Bournemouth, but the rural character of
this area in between still survives, and it makes a side attraction just off the Stour Valley
Way recreational route. [OS
map ref SZ 117/958]
Giant Hill, Cerne Abbas, Dorset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
This is the view most people get of the 180ft high chalk giant visible from the official
viewpoint, in a lay-by just outside Cerne Abbas village in central Dorset. It's not a great
view (you need to take binoculars to see any detail), but I thought it was worth offering
a desktop-size download under the circumstances.
For the Giant is suddenly in the news because even the modest view you see here [shot in
August 2005] is now obscured. The Giant's chalk outline has faded, due to the damp-spring
weather conditions and the need for the 1ft-wide outline to be "scoured". (This
is done periodically, along with "re-chalking" to prevent him from disappearing
into the hillside over time.)
Today [20 June 08], newspaper photographs in The
Times and elsewhere show him all but invisible against a brown hillside, disappointing
visitors. The National Trust has apparently failed to find any sheep to graze the hillside,
which is too steep for mowing machines. As the Daily Mail colourfully quoted the NT,
'In the past we have relied on sheep to keep him shawn.' (Someone at the Mail or NT
is evidently a Wallace & Gromit fan.)
Update: In September 2008, on Heritage Open Day, volunteers replaced the lichen
covering and added in new chalk fill, mixed as a paste, then local sheep were brought in
to crop the grass. (BBC time-lapse coverage here
.)
The Giant's origin is unknown, but he is usually classed as a fertility symbol, so his
disappearing like this would in earlier times be taken for an omen that the crops or economy
will fail. Archaeologists like dry summers as they expose areas of outline lost before
the National Trust takeover, and there may still be lost figures surrounding the giant.
Archaeologist Rodney Castleden in the 1990s discovered the Giant had originally held a
lion-skin cape and severed head dangling from his left arm. There are references to missing
portions of the chalk carving, and some early photos show strange indentations around the
giant, though some of these may just be subsidence.
St Augustine's Well
The village of Cerne Abbas (pop.800) was named this spring as the most desirable
village in Britain in a survey by estate agents Savills . It is worth visiting in itself
for the remnants of the Benedictine Abbey from which it took its name. There is a gatehouse,
a holy well, and if you like mysteries, some strange mounds beyond the cemetary. Leading
up the Abbey gatehouse past the church is a street of half-timbered Tudor-style houses
sometimes seen in films and TV dramas (such as the 1963 Tom Jones and ITV's Tess),
and there are several pubs and tearooms for refreshment.
Glastonbury Abbey ruins
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
A shot of the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, taken on the June 1st weekend. The property was re-acquired by the church 100 years ago, in 1908. It had been in private hands following Henry VIII's Dissolution of The Monasteries, which had seen what had been England's finest abbey ruined. It is semi-officially known as "the cradle of Christianity in England" as some believe the first church in England (perhaps in Europe) stood here. Every year, there are both Catholic and CoE pilgrimages. This year, the Catholic one comes first (Saturday 7th June), followed by the Church of England's own official Glastonbury Pilgrimage 2008 on Saturday 21st June.
The
New Forest [click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Above: A woodland area in the depths of The New Forest, once a Royal Forest (i.e. mediaeval
hunting preserve), redeveloped after WWII by the Forestry Commission with new conifer plantations,
and now our newest National Park.
This being the Tree Council's 'Walk In The Woods Month' "to encourage everyone
to enjoy trees and woods in spring", with a programme of guided walks, and downloadable
leaflets (if that's the right word), I've updated our 3 web-pages on woodlands. At the western
end of our area (and of the Jurassic Coast) is the Lyme Regis Underwood, the closest you
can get to experience Britain's now-vanished "Wildwood." For anyone interested
in visiting the eastern end of our coverage area, there is 'The Pines Of Bournemouth'.
There is also a page on the wooded nature reserve of
St Catherine's Hill overlooking the Avon Valley near Christchurch. However, note that the
text deals with the hill as a religious "mystery site". The pine woods atop the hill are
themselves under threat as the Council wants to cut down up to 15,000 trees to "restore"
the hill.) This is also Local History Month, if you're interested in delving into the odd
place-names and legends associated with sites like this, there's an opportunity here. The
guide to the adjacent Avon Valley area is also
updated.
Inland on the eastern side, we have the New Forest,
a mix of woodland and heathland ("Forest" was a legal term for a royal hunting
preserve). As we haven't a separate page on the New Forest yet, I've put up a photo of it,
above, as our new desktop-download photo, showing the different types of woodland vegetation
and ground cover you can see in the Forest.
§ The Pines
Of Bournemouth
§ Britain's Lost 'Wildwood'
§ The Mystery
Of St Catherine's Hill
View from South Cadbury Hillfort
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version] May
is now upon us - amazingly (for England) coinciding with the first hot days of the year.
This is when - in olden times - people would set off on pilgrimages. So I thought a
picture of the view from South Cadbury would be apt, for this impressive Dark Ages hill-fort
was one of the legendary localisations of Camelot. (As Henry VIII's travelling antiquarian
Leland put it, "By South Cadbury is that Camelot..." of which the people
of the time still spoke. This view is looking westward, into the haze.
Corfe Castle, April
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version] After
year-long maintenance work, the scaffolding has mostly been removed, in time for the first
warm sunny days of spring. This late-afternoon shot was taken from the garden of the Greyhound
Inn, adjacent to the main ramp over the dry moat. (We also have a page covering Corfe and
nearby Swanage, which I've also updated, here.
As the Greyhound Inn's garden abuts the castle dry-moat, it offers the best views of the
castle, and the Inn claims to be the most photographed 'hostelry' in Britain.)
Spring equinox 2007, The Agglestone, Purbeck
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Wells
Cathedral, Somerset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The fact of having a cathedral gave Wells the legal status of a city, albeit today England's
smallest. Unlike nearby Glastonbury Abbey, the Cathedral survived the Reformation almost
intact, together with the moated Bishop's Palace. It is today regarded by some as the most
magnificent example of its kind.
Millionaires'
Row, Sandbanks, Poole
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
Millionaires'
Row, Sandbanks (the spit of land enclosing Poole Harbour on the north) has been much featured
in the media this past year. Regularly the topic of newspaper stories on high property prices,
it was also showcased in an episode (on the 'Property Coast') of BBC's hit series Coast and
an ITV 3-part series hosted by Piers Morgan in January 2008. Its nickname Millionaires' Row
derives from the fact it is the most expensive real estate in Britain, owing to its combination
of a central location (within the Poole-Bournemouth conurbation) and scenic views. Due to
its siting on a narrow sandspit, houses have an upper-floor view over Poole Bay to seaward
and, in the other direction, Poole Harbour.
Poole Harbour, foggy spring day
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The Harbour
takes on a different aspect in winter - quiet and mysterious when fog-shrouded - from its
summer image, when it is a lively venue for water-based sports of various kinds.
View from St Catherine's Hill
[click to view, right-click to download full-size
version]
The Avon Valley
and western edge of The New Forest at New Year's, looking E from St Catherine's Hill viewpoint
N of Christchurch. The valley is wet bottomland along here and low-lying fog is a regular
feature of the area on winter mornings.
Poole Harbour, winter sunset
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
(This is
the most suitable wintry photo I could find for December. We haven't had any serious snowfall
for some years.)
Watership
Down, Hampshire
[click to view, right-click to download full-size
version]
Watership
Down, in Hampshire: the scarp or escarpment is famous as the home of a colony of rabbits
in the Richard Adams novel and animated film and tv series based on it, but is a real place
[Wiki page here]. The
Wafayers Walk long-distance path skirts it, as does a cross-country cyle route, though sightings
of rabbits are not guaranteed....
View from Farley Down, Hampshire
[click to view, right-click to download full-size version]
The view from Farley Down, Hampshire, looking SE towards Southampton, towards sunset on a late-August evening, just after a rainshower — hence the (double) rainbow.
Introduction
If you're a first-time
visitor or generally not familiar with the south-central coast region (which lacks any official
designation), it is the stretch of coast and countryside which stands in the gap between the
officially-recognised South West and South East regions of England. (Actually there are various
overlapping jurisdictions, so that any given spot might be in either zone, or inland even part
of a more northern "Thames & Chilterns" zone.) For purposes of our coverage here, the region
runs between Southampton to the east, the Devon-Somerset border to the west, and northward
up to include Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. 
The 'south-central' area of coastline thus runs west from The Solent which separates the Isle
Of Wight from the mainland, and, proceeding westward, includes a series of sites significant
to England's geography and history. First is the double bay on which sit the historic market
town of Christchurch, the major resort of Bournemouth, the mouth of Poole Harbour (perhaps
Europe's or even the world's 2nd largest, with the port of Poole at its head), and the coast
around the Purbeck headland to the historic seaside resort of Weymouth and the peninsular Isle
Of Portland ('England's Gibraltar') to the Devon boundary at Lyme Regis. It thus also includes
the New Forest (now a National Park) in Hampshire, the Avon Valley (running north-south between
Christchurch on the coast, and Salisbury and Stonehenge in Wiltshire). Inland is the heartland
of ancient Wessex, alias 'Thomas Hardy Country' stretching across central Dorset. Much of the
coast is now the 'Jurassic Coast' World Heritage Site, known for its dinosaur fossil finds.
The conurbation consisting of Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole - the largest population
centre and the fastest-growing locality - is regarded as the touring centre for the region,
with most sites within an hour's travel. (It's now set to be a major hub for the 2012 Summer
Olympics, both for overflow accommodation for those attending the London events, and for those
attending the local sailing events along the Dorset coast.) Even if you've never been here
in person, you've probably read about it in novels or seen it on screen, for the region is
a longtime favourite with writers and now with producers and directors as a film and TV location.
On this website, and its media-themed sister
site (covering local authors such as Hardy, films shot in the region etc), you'll find
a series of illustrated guides to various aspects of the south-central region's geography and
history.
Online Guides
So far, online are:
§ Silicon Beach Bomo
Orientation Guide
Prompted by the town's promoting itself as a 'digital creative hub,' this set of
orientation-guide webpages on our sister site actually covers the entire Bournemouth-Poole-Christchurch
conurbation, with the focus on public amenities such as cafes and restaurants.
§ Valley Of The Avon
A guide to visiting the Avon Valley, which runs from Christchurch Harbour
north to Salisbury and Stonehenge.
§ Corfe Castle And Swanage
A guide to visiting this popular pair of destinations (connected by steam railway), at the
start [eastern end] of the Jurassic Coast.
§ Lulworth And Durdle Door
A guide to visiting this popular central section of the Jurassic Coast, Lulworth Cove and the
scenic rock arch a mile along the Coast Path to the west.
§ Introduction To Hardy's Wessex
Thomas Hardy's 'Wessex Novels' first publicized the region as a tourism destination, and almost
all guidebooks still refer to this, with Dorchester as Hardy's "Casterbridge" etc.
§ The Pines Of Bournemouth
An introduction to Bournemouth's most famous "natural" feature, the pines planted here by the
million when it was heathland being converted into a health-spa resort.
§ Britain's Lost 'Wildwood'
The closest you can come to walking through primaeval wildwood is at the Jurassic Coast's western
end, between Lyme Regis and the Devon boundary - the still-dangerous Undercliff woodland featured
in The French Lieutenant's Woman.
§ Britain's Festival Year
Tourism being based on historic holidays such as Easter and Xmas, this is a heritage guide
to the traditional basis of these ancient festivals and holidays.
§ Our
Forgotten Regency Resort
Before Bournemouth existed, its neighbour was a fashionable upmarket resort in the early 19th
C., frequented by aristocrats and even a few royals.
§ Top Ten Scenic Ruins
In The Region
Despite their longstanding appeal, scenic ruins are often overlooked in mainstream tourism
sources which focus on more commercial sites. This guide features 10 of interest, most of which
have no entry fee.
The St
Catherine’s Hill Mystery Site
This hill above Christchurch has more than one mystery associated with it, including
its ancient name...
Google Earth Map
As well as Ordnance Survey's Get-A-Map service [see below],"Google Earth" is also useful to gain directions to sites. Google Earth offers satellite photos, maps, or photos with a map overlay (usually road and town names) if you select the “Hybrid” tab. When loaded, the initial view from the link below will show the entire south-central region which we cover. You can zoom in from there using the “+” slider control. Map View | Hybrid View
Today, you can also access Google Maps on a smartphone, and most of these have a function to download a map section for viewing offline if need be.
To visit or locate many of the sites we discuss on these web-pages, you'll need one of several Ordnance Survey maps. The OS Maps series, produced by a Crown agency based in Southampton, are traditionally available via bookshops and outdoors equipment shops (usually £4-6), and shopping for these is best done in person. (You have to check which ones you need - your planned trips may easily cross into another map area.)
The series you need, for both driving and walking, is the Landranger 1:50,000-scale map series. The 'sheet' numbers are: 183 and 184 [covering Wiltshire], 193 [W Dorset and E Somerset], 194 [central Dorset], 195 [E Dorset], and 196 [New Forest and Wight].
There is also an Ordnance Survey double CD set available for around £20, but having bought this several years ago when it first appeared, I have to say it's more of a sampler, with only a few detailed map sections available for any given area. Although the printed versions are really a necessity for actual trips, when you are just doing preliminary planning, these days you can access and download relevant map sections free, from here: 'Get-a-map' from Ordnance Survey.
As with other websites, you can also right-click on the on-screen image to save it to your computer for future reference. The map sections are in PNG format, so you'll need a graphics viewer that can handle these. (If stuck, install IrfanView - it's a versatile freeware graphics programme which can view PNGs and resave them in the more familiar GIF, JPEG or BMP formats.)
You can search by place name, by postcode, or by grid reference. If you know the OS grid reference (such as ST653167 for Sherborne Castle in north Dorset) of a site (e.g. from a guidebook or website), you can use it to get the relevant map. Note that however, for readability, these codes are often printed in guidebooks with spaces or slashes between the two-letter prefixes and sets of three or four figures (e.g. as 'ST 653 167' or as 'ST653/167'). However this will not work when inputting the reference into the OS website search-box - this punctuation must be removed if you type (or copy and paste) any online coordinates directly into the OS website's search box.)
If you don't know how to find sites using the OS grid-reference co-ordinates when using the printed versions, click below to download our printable PDF, Reading Ordnance Survey Maps.
Tourism Info - Links
Bournemouth.com
Bournemouth Tourism
Bournemouth International Airport
'Dorset For You' Local Councils portal
Hampshire County Council
Jurassic Heritage Coast
Jurassic Coast.com
Resort Dorsett
New Forest Online
PooleTourism.com
Somerset Tourism
South West Tourism
Wiltshire Tourism
Wiltshire Web
Top