West Bay has the famous golden cliffs but also the crowds, so Hive Beach just down the coast is much quieter. It's accessed down the beach road from Burton Bradstock, another picture postcard Dorset village, where a National Trust car park nestles in the sandy gap between two sets of cliffs. The amazing ones are to the west, three-quarters of a mile of ridged honeycomb which you can choose to walk over or under, or perhaps head out one way and come back the other.
The bright colour comes from a layer of Bridport Sand Formation, a grey sandstone laid down 180m years ago which lightens and weathers when exposed to air and seawater. Stronger sandstone beds occur throughout, poking out in parallel ridges, all overlain by a thinner cap of delightfully-named Inferior Oolite. As with much of the Dorset coast it's relatively unstable and has a tendency to come crashing down after particularly wet weather, hence the sight of orangerockfalls slumped down onto the beach at occasional intervals. A particularly large fall killed a holidaymaker in the summer of 2012 so you probably don't want to walk right under the base of the cliffs, hence the warning signs, although at any one time you're almost certainly completely safe. That large white house up there on the clifftop used to belong to Billy Bragg.
We did the westward beach walk, the tide not being fully in, crunching along the gravel below the monster sandpile. The power of erosion was fully visible, from slight underhangs to full collapse, plus cracks in the cliff that birds occasionally flew into. From down here it's hard to imagine that up top is all grass and fields, although if you wait long enough everything up top will eventually be down below. You can walk all the way to West Bay via a footbridge over the River Bride, getting your full cliff fix, or you can tromp back to the car park and seek refreshment in the sprawling Hive Beach Cafe. A takeaway window is available if you don't want the full sitdown seafood treatment. Beach webcam here, if you fancy a peek.
Chesil Beach
Chesil Beach is one of the UK's most extraordinary geomorphological features, a shingle bank that stretches 18 miles along the Dorset coast (the equivalent of linking Wembley to Bromley). It starts at West Bay and curves gently towards the Isle of Portland, cutting off a lengthy saltwalter lagoon called The Fleet. At its western end it's fed by rockfalls, as previously referenced, and spreads by means of longshore drift which hopefully you once had a geography lesson about. The pebbles are gravel sized at West Bay/Hive Beach and more akin to small potatoes at the Portland end, inexorably sorted by the relentless swash of the waves. And the best view is probably from the layby at the top of Abbotsbury Hill, which thankfully had a few spaces because it was May and not July.
The beach is clearly seen, a high pebbly ridge separated from the shore and protecting the lagoon behind. If you want to walk this section, which is approximately 10 miles long, be aware there's no way off the beach until you get to Portland. It's also heavy walking underfoot so not to be attempted lightly, plus out of bounds during the summer for nesting reasons, but if you time it right and feel resilient it's a great way to get away from it all. Chesil Beach is perhaps most easily accessed at the Portland end where a Visitor Centre exists, but I dropped in there in 2010 so return on this occasion.
Abbotsbury, another picture postcard village on the coast road, was once the site of a medieval abbey... the clue's in the name. The monks kept swans as far back as the 14th century, mainly for their meat, encouraging the formation of a breeding colony at the western end of the brackish Fleet. Today their swannery is home to 600 mute swans and thus the world's largest managed colony, and sometimes the majority of them all turn up at once.
Mass feedings occur at noon and 4pm, two times the avian population plainly anticipates, when a swanherd wheels a huge barrow of wheat down to the lagoonfront. Expect an illuminatingly lengthy talk about history and natural history before being let loose with a bucket and encouraged to chuck your feed in the general direction of multiple craning necks. Children are invited up first, impressively close to the seething throng, with adults of all ages encouraged to follow. It's an unforgettable sight.
This is also an excellent time of year to visit because it's breeding season. In spring around 100 pairs snuggle down around the water's edge and surround themselves with straw, into which the female drops a clutch of eggs on which she duly sits for five weeks. What's astonishing is how close together their nests are, given that mute swans are usually insanely territorial, but the joy of Abbotsbury is that the birds have learned to live together in a community because they're no longer competing for food, it's delivered to them. The first cygnets emerge in mid-May, i.e. right about now, although we alas turned up on the day the season's first egg cracked open so saw none. My top tip is to wait until the AA puts up yellow 'Abbotsbury Baby Swans' signs at all the local road junctions, which they did two days after our visit heralding the start of the cute grey fluff-fest.
Other things to see here include a bird hide (because swans don't have the monopoly), a historically significant decoy trap (a net tunnel used by the monks to funnel their dinner) and a small lake (inevitably called Swan Lake). Nearer the entrance is a small display about bouncing bombs (because the protypes were tested here on the Fleet), a large willow maze in the shape of a swan (it's surprisingly hard) and a fairly lacklustre patch of go-karts. The Swannery also has a sister attraction on the other side of the village, an 18th century hollow of subtropical gardens which you can visit with a reduced combined ticket. But mainly it's all about the swans and how incredibly close you can get to an incredible number of them, incredibly.
I wrote about Weymouth before and during the Olympics so I won't expound again, but I did drop by to catch the Jurassic Coasterbus and can confirm that the beach was considerably emptier this time.
The Isle of Portland is a 4-mile long rocky teardrop connected to the mainland by a pebble beach and a single road. It's highest at the northern end and then slopes south across a strange grey landscape of suburbia and open cast quarrying. This is the origin of the famous Portland Stone which, because it's both weather-resistant and readily sculptable, was used to construct Buckingham Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and thousands of other iconic buildings. Alas the Fortuneswell viewpoint was closed for maintenance so we drove all the way to the tip of the island and its landmark lighthouse made famous by a 1980s animation, Portland Bill.
Trinity House first warned off ships in 1844 by means of a stone obelisk, still extant, with a trio of lighthouses following of which the big stripy one is from 1906. For £9 you can go up top on a guided tour or you can wander round the tiny shop at the base for nothing. We plumped instead for an ice cream from The Lobster Pot, their chips being a bit pricey, and also a short walk around the thrift-covered rocky hinterland. Waves crashed against the shore, fairly gentle by prevailing standards, and an old winch suggested that exporting chunks of rock was once a risky business.
I assumed the MOD compound by the lighthouse would be coast related but it is in fact a magnetic measurement centre used to test and calibrate the Royal Navy's compasses, a site selected for its remoteness and because Portland Stone is conveniently non-magnetic. I also somehow failed to take a photo of Pulpit Rock, a lofty quarried stack of some repute, but thankfully thousandsofotherpeople have so you needn't miss out. And this is as far along the Jurassic Coast as we explored during our week in Dorset so I'll end this three part series here, just rest assured that Lulworth, Kimmeridge and Swanage exist and are undoubtedly worth coming back for.
