Easter Weekend

Thursday, March 20th

My friend, Ali, came to visit over Easter Weekend and we went hiking along the South West Coast Path. The path stretches for 630 miles along the Jurassic Coast (a World Heritage Site) from Poole to Maidenhead, but we were only going to do a portion of it. Ali and I met in Edinburgh when we both worked together at a bookstore. She’s from the States, but despite what some people may think (ahem, Andy) Americans and Canadians can get along!


She arrived in the evening during a rainstorm, so she got soaked walking from the coach to my centre, but she did make it okay! That night, I had planned a party to celebrate my birthday, although a bit belatedly. This party wasn’t just any party – it had a theme which was to dress semi-formally, but with wellies (aka wellingtons, or rubber boots for you North Americans – see picture). Why the fascination with wellies? Well, you see staff at my centre are divided into two sorts: environmental products people and activity people. Environmental products people like me are always being teased good naturedly about having a fascination for wearing wellies and rucksacks everywhere we go, so I thought it would be fun to bring this concept into the party. Anyway, it was a great night, and yes, most people conformed to the dress code!

Friday, March 21st

Ah, the beginning of our 35 mile hike from Osmington to Poole. It was beautiful day, despite what the weather forecast had been predicting! We had planned to take it easy this day – only an 8 mile journey from Osmington to Lulworth Cove. After just over a mile of amazing views we decided to stop for lunch at the Smuggler’s Inn. It’s a cute little pub full of character and good food. It was definitely a very relaxing start to our hike!

After lunch, we walked down to the beach, clamouring over large boulders to get to a shipwreck from the 1800s that was exposed due to the low tide (see picture). It was very cool to see up close, and maybe someday in the future I will head up there again to get an even better view by wading out to it!


Back to the path we went, climbing up to White Nothe – a point that offers pretty spectacular views out over the agricultural landscape (see picture). It also has a pillbox, which is where soldiers used to keep a look out for the enemy over the waters during World War II. The entire south coast is dotted with them, and they are generally fairly intact. It’s really interesting to be able to go inside them and get that close to a piece of valuable history.


Next up was beautiful chalk white cliffs (see picture) in the form of Bat’s Head – a slim (maybe 3m wide) chalky protrusion from the coast with a small an arch in it. The sheer beauty of the area made having to hike up and down repeatedly over the steep cliffs incredibly worth it! You can climb out onto Bat’s Head, but I wouldn’t do it on a very windy day, as you would likely plummet to the beach below! We were feeling adventurous though and we just made sure to keep our legs firmly planted onto the ground. It was worth it for the views back towards where we had come from.


The high point of the journey that day was probably in the form of Durdle Door. Although I often take the kids I teach to the area it never ceases to amaze me with its sheer grandeur. Durdle Door is a natural arch formed in Portland Limestone (see picture) – it is incredibly beautiful and you can actually see the different layers of rock that were formed over 100 million years ago.







From Durdle Door, we walked over the hill to Lulworth Cove and watched the sunset on Stairhole Cove (see picture). We spent the night at a hostel in Lulworth.




Saturday, March 22nd

Today’s journey was a giant, at least for beginner hikers like me! We were walking from Lulworth to Swanage, a journey of about 20 miles. We knew it was going to be a long day, but we were prepared for the challenge. We got up at 6:30am and were out the door an hour later.

Most of day’s hike would be dominated by passing through the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Army Ranges which (thankfully!) were open to the public that weekend, allowing us to avoid a lengthy detour around the outskirts of the ranges. The first item of note that we came across was the Fossil Forest, which consists of a bunch of fossilized trees in the undercliffs along the coast. Don’t get too excited – fossilized trees honestly sound a lot cooler than they really are. They essentially just look like large donuts made out of rock (see picture), but nevertheless, it’s not every day you can get your picture taken with a fossilized tree!


One of the toughest challenges of the day showed itself in the form of Devil’s Staircase. If you check out the picture you should be able to see a path carved into the hillside near the left hand side of the photo. This was our staircase that went on and on and on for over 100m of basically straight vertical ascent. It was really difficult to climb – I am not going to lie . . . I took multiple breaks! But, we both made it and felt all the better for it!


The rest of our hike through the MOD ranges was pretty much along a ridge and then up and down some incredibly steep cliffs. Successfully completing this hike would have been difficult enough for someone who is minimally fit, like me, however, to make it even more of challenge we had to contend with wind gusts of 70mph and a couple of hail showers! The winds were so strong we were literally blown over a couple of times onto the ground. By the time we’d reached about the halfway point we were physically exhausted from climbing the cliffs and from fighting the winds, so we decided to take the easy route the rest of the way. We hitchhiked into town and called a taxi to drive us the rest of the way to Swanage! We then spent a luxurious afternoon sitting in the sun in a sheltered cafe drinking the best hot chocolate I have ever had. It was brilliant.

Sunday, March 23rd

Today’s journey was another relatively short one: this time from Swanage to Poole, or about 8 miles on relatively flat coast line. In short: absolute heaven when compared to the day before. After the first 1 or 2 miles we came to Old Harry Rocks (see picture), which are pretty chalk stacks. These apparently used to form part of a land connection all the way to the Isle of Wight!





Next up we visited Fort Henry and learned about Exercise Smash. This was an area of beach and bunkers where the soldiers of WWII used to practice for their D-Day invasion. The information was informative and interesting and I have to say I was incredibly moved to be able to visit a location so rich in history.






The final stretch of our journey was spent walking along a beautiful beach that reminded me a bit of our beaches on the north shore of PEI. It was a great way to end our hike – we even accidently took a nap in what turned out to be a naturist area! Thankfully, the weather was a bit too cold to meet any naturists!




At the end of our hike, it was somewhat anti-climatic. We grabbed a couple of pictures of the only monument that seemed even remotely associated with our hike, and hopped on a ferry to Poole. The ferry, which according to the website was supposed to cost us 90p each, we somehow managed to take for free!



All in all, it was a great walk with a great friend. I am looking forward to the next one!