The End

The last walk. It was cold and dreary at Swanage.

Old Harry's Rocks were interesting. Depending on which legend you choose to believe, Harry is either a pirate, a viking or the devil.

After a nice lunch at a National Trust cafe on Knoll Beach, we walked along it, past the Naturists area. Funningly enough, everyone we saw was very well clothed against the cold.

At the end marker of the South West Coast Path on the ferry wharf to Sandbanks and Poole. The ferry was not running but we didn't need it as we had our little hire car. We walked into a pretty birch grove near the car park and planted the two acorns we had carried all the way from the beginning in Minehead.

We may not have walked the entire 1014 kms of the South West Coast Path, but that is OK. We have finished OUR Path. Everyone's path is different. 

We walked all of the north Somerset and north Devon coastline, all of the Cornish coast and selected sections of the south Devon and Dorset coastlines. We walked 733.2 kms of the official South West Coast Path over 70 days with 16 non-walking, sight-seeing, clothes-washing days included. We have experienced, learned and enjoyed our Path. 

Thankyou for reading and following our Path. Now, go out and find your own.

Beautiful crumbling Earth

Are we crazy? Some of the cliff-falling-down signs along the Jurassic Coast are a bit scary! And we are walking along sections of these cliffs.

Lyme Regis, where Mary Anning made some of the most important fossil finds in the 19th century and people still find fossils today.

We walked along the huge concrete sea wall that was completed in 2014 in an attempt to prevent the town from falling into the sea.

Our path then diverted inland around a large landslip area returning to the coast at Charmouth before another inland diversion. Lots of people were searching for fossils on the beach below the cliffs we had just walked around.

Heading up Golden Cap, at 191 metres, it is the highest point of the southern English coast.

Great views. And a pub on the beach at the bottom for chunky chips and cider as the late afternoon sun glowed golden on the cliffs.

Chesil Beach is a 29 km long, 15 metre high ridge of shingle, aka rounded stones, with a saline lake behind it. We decided not to walk the entire distance on the path that stays inland of the lake. We did climb the hill to St Catherine's chapel near one end.

The view from the chapel toward the Isle of Portland on the horizon. It is not quite an island as Chesil Beach connects it to the mainland. This photo does not do justice to the view and it was not possible to fit the entire beach in one photo.

Zooming in on the Isle of Portland end of Chesil Beach gives a bit of an idea of the way it seperates and joins land and water except you can't see the large open harbour that sits behind the hill on the left. Sometimes you just have to be there yourself.

We drove to the Portland end and walked on Chesil Beach. It is steep, wide and very hard to walk on. The beach was fascinating. These photos do not show its three-dimensional shape or the unique way the waves were breaking or the musical sound of the stones being thrown and rolled by the water.

On the other side of the Isle of Portland and Weymouth is a stretch of white chalk cliffs. The squiggly lines near the cliff edges are the path we walked.

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There were some very steep ascents and descents. The valley at the bottom pf this onecwas called Scratchy Bottom!

Durdle Door, one of the best known features along this section of coast visited by thousands and thousands of people each year.

We spent some time down on the beach. This is a quiet time of the year.

Kids climbing out of caves eroded by the sea in the base of the cliffs, part of the cliff-falling process.

Nearby is Scarehole Bottom, kayakers paddling through its multiple arches

Lulworth Cove is an almost perfect circle shape with a gap opening to the sea. Both Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door belong to the privately owned Lulworth Castle Estate which makes a lot of money from people paying to park and to stay. I suspect that yacht moored here belongs to the owner of the estate.

Fossil forest on a large ledge on the cliff below the path. The round shapes indicate where trees once grew.

Looking but not walking at the next quite long section of coast that lies within Ministry of Defence land and is not always open to the public. We chise not to walk here.

These pictures are just a few from four days of walking the Jurassic Coast.

Rainy days in south Devon

On the rainy days we chose to stay indoors, mostly. We joined the National Trust. This means free entry and free parking at their historic properties. We have already covered what we spent so visits are now effectively free. Excellent value.

Buckland Abbey -We thought we were going to see an old monastry but it was effectively a very early church conversion. When Henry VIII closed the Catholic churches and monastries in the 1500s he let one of his mates, Sir Richard Grenville, buy Buckland Abbey and convert it into a grand house. Then one of Queen Elizabeth I's favourites, Sir Frances Drake bought it. It stayed in his family until the 20th cdntury when it was given to the National Trust.

Sir Frances Drake. This is a larger-than-life plaster cast that was used to create a bronze statue.

Lots of lovely windows and maritime history. A model of Drake's Golden Hind.

The Great Hall with original Tudor floor tiles and ceiling. Some important people would have dined here over the years.

Many even older original details from the church can still be seen.

Sheryl looks tiny inside the enormous barn, originally the tithe barn for the Abbey where the local people would donate one tenth of their harvest for the monks to use.

The Abbey once had 22,000 acres of land. Much has been sold off but we went for a walk around the fields and woods for about an hour. We got rained on but it was still a lovely walk.

Cotehele - a Tudor mansion and estate that was the country home for the Edgecumbes of the Mt Edgecumbe estate which we walk through near Plymouth the previous week.

The house is built around a large courtyard.

The great hall full of momentos - armour, weapons, whale jaw bones, even an albatross head.

A peep hole from one of the bedrooms allowed someone to watch the goings-on down in the great hall which was used for gatherings as well as being the main entrance.

Cotehele also has large gardens and apple orchards. The cider shed was full of the sweet pungent aroma of bags and bags of apples.

"I hold you in the palm of My hand." A living sculpture in the orchard.

We walked through woods to an old water mill that still grounds flour and the quay on the Tamar River which does resemble the one in Tasmania. This was in the mill. I wonder if my Cornish ancestors who migrated to Tasmania in the 1850s were influenced by such posters.

Buckfast Abbey. It was a VERY wet day. We thought we were going to see an old working monastry and see how they grew their own food etc. After a very good value meal in the new cafe and a browse through a history display we learned that they no longer farm, most of the buildings are 20th century including the large church, although it was the site of a monastry before Henry VIII had it destroyed. We did not see a single monk and it was way too wet to do any walking outside.

A la Ronde - a very different house. Built in the 1700s by two women, the house has 16 sides and a light well in the middle. It was larger than I expected with four levels and room for servants.

The above pictures show how it originally looked with a thatched roof. Then in the 19th century dormer windows and bedrooms were installed in the roof space and the roof was tiled. At the moment it looks likes the picture below as they are fixing the leaking roof. But inside it is as normal.

Quirky features such as diamond-shaped windows with shutters that hinge from the middle.

A decoration hanging in the middle of the central room that extends all the way up through the building as a light well with windows in the very top of the roof. The many doors of the encircling outer rooms are reflected in the silver sphere.

The same room taken from one of the doors.

In between each of the outer rooms was a tiny 'wedge room' often used for storage. This one is a tiny library.

The women made this architrave from feathers glued onto boards and installed on an angle so that the dust would not settle on them. No cleaning required, very clever.

This is a picture of the top level up in the roof-light well. The public are not permitted up there as the shell covered walls are too fragile. There are A LOT of shells up there!

The house was passed down to unmarried female family members. It only had one male owner when the woman who had inherited it married and then sold it. When he died it was purchased by an unmarried female relative of the original women and the female ownership tradition recommenced. A la Ronde was filled with quirky decorations and collections. I love the spirit of A a Ronde.