How long would it take to ride all the Overground lines?
That's all six of them, for at least one stop, as quickly as possible.
I gave it a go, and I started in the obvious place.
Of the six lines the Liberty line is both the most remote and has the least frequent trains. Best start on the line with the half-hourly frequency rather than end up there and unintentionally have to wait 29 minutes. And best start in the middle of the line rather than at a terminus, because then you only have to go one stop before escaping. So any Overground challenge is going to have to begin at Emerson Park.
Intermission
Emerson Park is a strange place, a single platform halt in the suburban wilds of Havering, also the least used station on the whole of the Overground network. So it was a surprise to find two members of staff on duty, one sweeping the platforms and the other holed up in his kiosk in case any situation transpired that required his involvement. This seemed ridiculously unlikely. But perhaps the most surprising thing about Emerson Park is that TfL's Overground rebranding team have completely forgotten it exists.
The enamel line diagrams across the Overground network were replaced last year and covered with a sheet of vinyl so they could all be revealed simultaneously on launch day. This reveal happened everywhere else but failed to happen at Emerson Park which means the orange vinyl sticker is still on display, not the proper grey sign underneath. If you wander over to the panel between the Oyster pad and the Help Point you can see a thin grey strip poking above the top of the orange sticker, as yet unrevealed. And if you look closer at the bumps in the vinyl you can clearly see the raised letters L i b e r t y underneath the phrase 'Trains to Romford and Upminster'.
I know Emerson Park is remote but it's ridiculous that nobody official has yet spotted the lack of visible signage. They peeled off the vinyls at Romford which now has several grey signs, ditto at Upminster on the way to platform 6. But somehow the instruction never made it to Emerson Park, so here we are SIX MONTHS LATER with the signage still in its pre-launch state. It's not even an unstaffed station. Those responsible for Overground rebranding should be mighty embarrassed, as should whoever's responsible for managing this station for failing to notice the non-reveal on any of the last 180 days. I hope to see the proper grey sign next time I go back.
OK, here comes my first train, start the stopwatch.
Liberty line: Emerson Park to Upminster (00:00-00:04)
The train's not busy, indeed two of us have the entire front half to ourselves, i.e. one carriage each. I've had to do some proper timetable-digging to decide whether to go to Romford or to Upminster first. Romford looked most promising, allowing a rapid Crossrail whizz into town, but the switch to the Suffragette line would have required a street level bolt from Forest Gate to Wanstead Park in four minutes flat which I deemed undoable. Instead I chose to use c2c from Upminster to Barking, the Fenchurch Street train being ten minutes faster than the tube, and attempted the nigh impossible connection there instead.
Suffragette line: Barking to Walthamstow Queen's Road (00:23-00:36)
So this proved tough. My c2c train was scheduled to arrive on platform 5 at the same time as the Suffragette train arrived on platform 8. Thankfully we were a minute early which gave me a chance to bolt down the ramp into the subway, then bolt back up again just in time to see the Overground train preparing to depart. My thanks to the driver who hung on an extra few seconds to allow three of us to pant aboard, otherwise that would have set my challenge back by fifteen minutes. And then to make sure I could switch easily to the Weaver line I stayed on for five stops, heading all the way out to Walthamstow.
Weaver line: Walthamstow Central to Hackney Downs (00:48-00:57)
I had ten minutes to walk between the two stations in Walthamstow, a comfortable margin. I did worry I was spending too much time changing between trains and standing waiting but that's the nature of this challenge, it's all about how the respective timetables mesh together. There followed a spin across the sunny Walthamstow Marshes, sharing the carriage with a babyfaced banker with pink bikes on his tie and a smart lady with a cartoon teddy on her handbag. On reaching Hackney Downs I shot off down the lengthy connecting passage to Hackney Central, arriving just in time to see a Richmond train departing from the opposite platform. I consoled myself that even if I'd run very very fast I'd never have caught it.
Mildmay line: Hackney Central to Canonbury (01:06-01:10)
I'd now been travelling for over an hour and was only just ticking off the fourth line in my challenge. I got lucky here though, the next train behind mine was cancelled so I could have had a considerable wait, whereas instead I reached Canonbury just four minutes later. Nobody sensible changes trains here when travelling west, hence it's a bit of a hike, hence I missed yet another train departing from the platform as I yomped down the stairs. And that was an extra eight minutes to wait as I had my second bit of narrow bad luck.
Windrush line: Canonbury to Highbury and Islington (01:20-01:21)
And after all that I spent just one minute on the Windrush line, cunningly riding its northern tip rather than having to deviate south of the river. I now had just one line left to ride, the elusive Lioness, which I could have done by getting back on the Mildmay line and riding all the way to Willesden Junction. But far better, I deduced, to hop on the Victoria line and zip down to Euston to catch it there. It was certainly fast, and it would have been even better if I'd arrived at Euston with an orange train already in the platform. Unfortunately I'd just missed one, again, meaning a 12 minute wait for a train with a 15 minute frequency.
Lioness line: Euston to South Hampstead (01:44-01:48)
And finally the train to Watford, although I only needed to go one stop to South Hampstead. Along the way we passed the empty gash where HS2 will one day go, possibly after I'm dead, plus a couple of West Midlands trains parked in a siding. I finally reached my destination 1 hour and 48 minutes after setting out, annoyed that it could have been 1 hour 33 minutes if only I'd caught the train before the one I did. I blame getting unlucky at Hackney Central and Canonbury, although I was also ridiculously lucky at Barking so maybe I did better than I thought. According to the Tube Challenge online forum the record is 1 hour and 34 minutes, although only one person's ever tried it before which to be perfectly fair isn't exactly surprising.
I'd therefore like to claim to be the second fastest person ever to ride all six Overground lines. I particularly like how my optimum route started at the least used Overground station, which is Emerson Park, and ended at the second least used Overground station, which is South Hampstead. And it may have been a stupid thing to do but I'd never have noticed the unrevealed Liberty line panel at Emerson Park otherwise, something TfL have yet to do themselves.
Last month I wrote a blogpost highlighting Time Out's tendency to lift research from dubious sources and then claim the information is 'official'. They did it again yesterday in a piece called "It’s official: 6 of the UK’s dirtiest beaches for water quality are near London", which it turned out was based on a press release from commercial website Holiday Park Guru. And last week they did it to me.
This time their post was called There is now a new cheaper and greener way to get to London Stansted Airport. This would be via coach company Flibco who are indeed new and their coaches are indeed green. So far so good. The piece was plainly lifted from what I'd written, and fair enough they'd credited me and linked through - no complaints there. My issue was this line which was wilfully false.
I never claimed Flibco was the cheapest, I merely presented all kinds of scenarios which showed it often was. Book well in advance and the Stansted Express is actually the cheapest, whereas Flibco never reduce their fares up front. But that wasn't the aspect which concerned me, it was their claim that what I'd said was somehow 'official'. Specifically it sounded like I'd said it was officially cheapest, which I hadn't, this was merely the Time Out journalist's false interpretation.
Some days I think Time Out staff are trained to exaggerate rather than tell the truth because this brings in the readers. Other times I like to imagine there's a shadowy character behind the scenes called The SubEditor whose job it is to shoehorn lies and gross simplifications into every article for clickbait purposes. Whichever, it's become a wholly unreliable platform as far as accuracy and attribution are concerned.
I did email the journalist in question to express my displeasure, politely, but have heard nothing back. I therefore hope that writing about it in on my blog will bring the matter to the attention of those who work there. I know Time Out read this blog because they appropriated another of my posts last month, again with due accreditation, the very day after I last slagged them off for overuse of the word officially.
What I write is not official, although if Time Out are happy to assume it is then I am happy to call them liars - official.
TfL are chopping and changing two more buses in central London, specifically the 30 and 205, according to the results of a consultation released on Friday. This is despite their proposals receiving the support of less than 5% of respondents and widespread disapproval from all 22 stakeholders who responded. Stuff public opinion, let's save money.
The prime driver is a two mile curtailment of route 30 which'll now only run from Hackney Wick to Euston rather than to Marble Arch. This means the service can be operated with fewer vehicles and fewer drivers, saving a goodly few millions which can be redeployed elsewhere. Passenger numbers are down, apparently, plus both Euston Road and Baker Street are overbussed.
If only TfL's planners had stopped here the complaints would have been more muted. But they still want a bus to connect Euston to Marble Arch so the second part of their plan is to divert route 205 there instead. This would bear off near Madame Tussauds and thus no longer serve the final seven stops to Paddington, and this is what's got everyone fired up.
Old 205: Bow Church → Whitechapel → Liverpool St → King's Cross → Euston → Paddington New 205: Bow Church → Whitechapel → Liverpool St → King's Cross → Euston → Marble Arch
It's only a small tweak but it breaks 9% of journeys, i.e. around 2000 passengers a day. It also negates the original raison d'être of route 205 which was to connect mainline termini and shore up services on the edge of the upcoming Congestion Charge zone. Here's part of the original leaflet from 2002.
The 205 replaced two Stationlink services, one clockwise and one anticlockwise, along with short-lived 705 which was introduced to connect south of the river. Not everyone wants to take the tube between mainline stations, indeed some can't, so a step-free alternative which operates even during engineering works is always welcome. The leaflet also made play of the 205's links to four major London hospitals, not because patients need to travel between them but because inner London residents need to get there and back. The new diversion annoyingly chops off both Paddington station and St Mary's Hospital and that's why it's been doubly opposed.
The mitigation for folk who can no longer catch one bus to/from Paddington is to catch route 27 instead.
There are six stops on the 205/27 overlap, where 'all you have to do' is get off, wait and get on your next bus. But some people find getting on and off buses difficult, especially those who go to hospitals, so that's not ideal. Also route 205 runs every 10 minutes and route 27 every 12, so it could be a bit of a wait. Also the consultation recognises that route 27 doesn't currently meet reliability targets so you might end up waiting even longer than that. And it might be raining, and you might not get a seat on your next bus, and your Hopper fare might have expired if you boarded in Tower Hamlets so you could end up paying double. No wonder 66% of respondents said they believed the change to route 205 would have a negative impact.
Of all the responses in the consultation report, this is perhaps the most callous...
The changes to routes 30 and 205 are due to be implemented on some as yet unannounced date next month. Neither is good, more a response to reduced budgets than a desire to better serve the customer. What's particularly poor in this case is that the 205 didn't need to change, that was merely TfL's chosen mitigation for cutting route 30, and it's a great shame they didn't select a less contentious alternative tweak instead.
45 Squared 17) DORSET SQUARE, NW1
Borough of Westminster, 100m×60m
Dorset Square is the greenspace you pass if you walk the backroads between Marylebone and Baker Street stations. It's rectangular, Georgian, semi-private and generally unsung, yet boasts a ridiculously important role in sporting history...
...because this terraced square, it turns out, is where Yorkshireman Thomas Lord leased some land and laid the first of three cricket pitches to bear his name. In 1787 this was the very edge of London where Marylebone melted into fields, thus the ideal spot for seven acres to be used by a cricket team looking to escape from rowdy Islington. However the price of land shot up with the building of the New Road, now Euston Road, so in 1810 Thomas was forced to move the games further out to a goods yard in St John's Wood. This was almost immediately acquired for the construction of the Regent's Canal, encouraging a final shift a short distance north to what's now Lord's Cricket Ground. The MCC's original pitch inevitably became housing, completed in 1830, and Dorset Square is believed to be named after the Duke of Dorset who was a big cricket fan at the time. Colin Cowdrey unveiled a plaque on the back of the gardener's shed to celebrate the site's bicentenary.
Dorset Square is still surrounded by yellowbrick terraces, generally four storeys high, with a stucco layer at ground level topped by a decorative balcony. These were once premier townhouses and still go for over a million on the open market, although these days you don't get a full property for that, merely a subdivided flat. They've also housed several famous folk hence the presence of three blue plaques, most notably that of Dodie Smith, author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians. A few houses further round is the former home of George Grossmith who co-wrote The Diary of a Nobody while living on Dorset Square, although its mundane protagonist lived in a plainer home in Holloway. The most incestuous plaque is that of Sir Laurence Gomme, the historian who persuaded the London County Council to instigate the blue plaque scheme in the first place and was rewarded with his own a century later.
The finest run of houses is along the northern side, which is also where the fortunate few get to park. The fact that most properties have an identical pair of potted bay trees on their porch step hints at the presence of an all-powerful management company behind the scenes. Another of their tasks is to supervise access to the central gardens, including organising a recent switch from physical keys to digital fobs for an £80 deposit. No pets, no barbecues, no roller blades, no smoking and strictly residents of numbers 1-40 only. A pristine hedge conceals most of the inner sanctum, but what can be squinted at through the gates looks splendid and can usually be experienced by mere plebs when London Open Gardens weekend comes round in June.
The most prestigious address in Dorset Square is currently number 8 which is home to the Embassy of El Salvador, although they only occupy the upper floors. The most cultural address is number 1 which belongs to the Alliance Française, the organisation charged with promoting the French language around the world, for whom this is their UK HQ. During WW2 it became their international HQ and also housed a branch of the Special Operations Executive. The square additionally boasts two hotels, one of which is the Dorset Square Hotel where Tim and Kit will do you a cooked breakfast in The Potting Shed for £30, so maybe not. But mostly this is a square for passing obliviously through, which I suspect is how the residents like it.
45
45 Squared 18) DEVONSHIRE SQUARE, EC2
City of London, 40m×30m
And so to the City, northeastern flank, hidden away between Houndsditch and Petticoat Lane market. This time the closest mainline terminus is Liverpool Street, indeed tube trains between Liverpool Street and Aldgate pass directly under Devonshire Square. The name comes from the Duke of Devonshire who owned a Tudor townhouse on this site, demolished for redevelopment in 1675 although remains of its wall exist round the back where you can't see them. The oldest surviving houses on the square are the neoclassical pair at numbers 12 and 13, one of which is the smallest livery hall in the City of London, although The Worshipful Company of Coopers only bought it in 1957. They opened their doors for Open House for the first time last year so I have already seen their courtroom, mallet cabinet and ornamental barrel store.
Next oldest are the East India Company warehouse buildings built in the 1820s, later used by the Port of London Authority and now poorly-windowed offices. One of its lower arches contains a dry cleaner's backroom and a pair of shoeshine chairs used for polishing weekdays only. The opposite side of the square is late Victorian, this because the Metropolitan Railway's method of cut and cover was particularly destructive, as are pretty much all the buildings down Devonshire Row. The standout building is a branch of Sri Lanka's premier bank, still called Bank of Ceylon because why change a successful brand. And try not to look south because that huge brick building is an electricity substation, partly screened by trees and with the Gherkin poking over the top but still somewhat of an eyesore.
The centre of the square is covered by a very low dense canopy of trees, below which are benches where you can vape safely without the any risk of sunburn. It all looks terribly characterless. More striking are the linear gardens which stretch down towards Cutler Street, this officially a 70m extension to Devonshire Square and seemingly keeping a top topiary team in business. The most extraordinary feature is a metal statue of a knight on horseback representing the Cnihtengild, a mythical band supposedly granted this land by King Edgar in return for a series of unlikely duels. You can read that tale on the board underneath, and read the story of how a Scottish blacksmith assembled it for Standard Life in 1990 here. The statue wasn't originally here but the insurers moved out shortly afterwards so it was relocated from their courtyard to some lawn.
And then there's modern Devonshire Square, a massive and highly irregular office campus bumping up against the very edge of the City. Their marketing team describe it as "a vibrant multi-use site" and a "an eclectic 24-hour destination", but to me it feels like a misjudged commercial warren brimming with unlet co-working space and half-empty refreshment options. I bumped into more people laying tables for an alfresco wedding in the main courtyard than I did punters taking advantage of the other facilities, but that's Saturdays for you. Also it's not a street so even though it's branded Devonshire Square it's not officially Devonshire Square which is the peculiar combination of throwback Stuart quadrangle plus service road out front.
While I've been preoccupied on the south coast, London has continued unabated.
Monday 5th May
I understand the VE Day flypast was spectacular but I missed it. I was hoping to catch up further along the route but unfortunately my train passed through Bournemouth at 1pm and the Red Arrows didn't arrive until 2pm.
Tuesday 6th May
The ceramic poppies are back at the Tower of London to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day. However this time there are only 30,000 of them whereas back in 2014 there were 880,000, plus the flowers aren't filling the moat, merely dribbling off the White Tower so you won't see them unless you pay to go inside. As a Tower Hamlets resident it only costs £1 to go inside, but quite frankly I was happier to be in Lyme Regis.
Wednesday 7th May
They've announced the shortlist of five designs for the Queen Elizabeth II memorial in St James's Park. I only hate four of them so it could be worse. You can rank the possibilities (and sigh at the associated word salad) here.
Thursday 8th May
I hope BBC London News put VE Day commemorations in the capital front and centre of this evening's news, but Spotlight South West alas focused instead on the parade on Plymouth Hoe, wreath-laying in Brixham, bellringing in St Austell and vintage jive in Okehampton.
Friday 9th May
The Mayor nowsays he's keen to explore building on the Green Belt. To be clear that's some of the Green Belt, not all of the Green Belt, specifically certain so-called 'low-quality' bits, not your favourite woodland and its happy squirrels so stop your frothing. The thought is that new affordable neighbourhoods with excellent transport connections would enormously improve Londoners' quality of life, especially if coupled with greening initiatives, which is what the Mayor hopes to write into the new London Plan. I might have gone out and blogged about a few possiblelocations, places you totally wouldn't miss, whereas instead I was in West Bay where they don't have Green Belt but it still looks really pretty.
Saturday 10th May
It was a toss-up between the Hot Sauce Festival in Peckham or attending my nephew's wedding, and I'm afraid paying £5 for the chance to buy spicy bottles from 42 independent traders lost out. If any of you attended, do please tell us what we missed.
Sunday 11th May
As previously mentioned, it was Tate Modern's 25th birthday today and they put on a celebratory weekend but I couldn't go. Thankfully one work of art returning for the anniversary is still present, Louise Bourgeois' enormous metal spider Maman, which is back in predatory position on the Turbine Hall mezzanine. I remember admiring her last time, also climbing one of Louise's mighty steel towers, and the eight-legged monster is just as wonderfully impactful as ever.
Monday 12th May
TfL and the Mayor have launched a new Tube Map to celebrate the contribution of grassroots music venues to the cultural life of the capital. It's so derivative you can almost imagine the planning meeting ("Hey we need to promote grassroots music venues." "Shall we do a tube map?" "Well obviously!" "Great let's take the afternoon off."). What surprised me about themediacoverage is that nobody seemed to be linking to the map, merely displaying a blurry snippet and telling you to go view it at Outernet. I went to Outernet to have a look but it wasn't on display because the Arcade was on a different part of its marketing cycle so I came home unsatisfied. I've since sourced the full-sized jpg here, so well done Jon but can we please do something other than a rejigged tube map next time, thanks.
Tuesday 13th May ✅
The new footbridge at Canary Wharf is now open. It was lowered into place last month but has just been debarriered and you now can walk across. Bankers at Morgan Stanley heading for a booze-up at The Henry Addington may find it most useful, but it's already proving a popular cut-through avoiding having to walk all the way round the dock past the tube station. According to the brandmonkeys it's "a major milestone in our vision to make Eden Dock a thriving, accessible green space" and "completes the final phase of our award-winning waterfront oasis", but in reality it's just a really nice quite useful footbridge. The South Dock bridge, if it's ever built, will be more of a gamechanger.
Wednesday 14th May
Tower Hamlets Town Hall has been crowned the RIBA LondonBuilding of the Year 2025, which is good because it's the only one of the 38-strong shortlist that I've been taken round by the chief architect. Hurrah for London Open House, which means I can see why it won rather than wondering why the publicly accessible ground floor is so vacuously empty. The RIBA winner in the South West & Wessex region will be announced in July.
Thursday 15th May
I see Charlton Athletic will be competing against Leyton Orient in the League One playoffs for a coveted place in the Championship next season. A promoted London team is guaranteed. My commiserations to Stockport and Wycombe.
Friday 16th May
What does the High Courtdecision on planning consent for Brockwell Park mean for Mighty Hoopla and the future of the Lambeth Country Show, and indeed festivals across council-owned spaces across London, and indeed council tax bill increases, and indeed horribly churned up turf, and indeed smug Nimbys? Prepare to read all kind of discordant opinion pieces.
The Jurassic Coast is the umbrella name for the shoreline between Exmouth and Swanage, renowned for undulating hills, pebble beaches and crumbling cliffs. It's partly in Devon but mostly in Dorset, and famed for its fossils as the wave-lapped rocks relentlessly recede. In 2001 it became the UK's first geological UNESCO World Heritage Site, and rightly so. And I've just spent a week exploring it, or at least the 30 mile section in the middle, so this three-part series will just take in the highlights between Seaton and Portland. [75 photos]
Seaton is the southeasternmost town in Devon, a fishing port turned seaside resort at the mouth of the river Axe. These days it's more of a retirement bolthole, the local holiday camp having closed in 2005, and is conveniently located in a dip between chalk and sandstone cliffs. The esplanade fronts a pebbly beach with a defensive sea wall, guarded by a recent pair of sculpted gates designed to protect against the stormiest tides. If ornamental gardens, clocktowers and ice cream kiosks incapable of squirting a 99 are your thing, Seaton may only marginally disappoint.
Second place in the town's tourist trail goes to the recently-rebranded Jurassic Discovery centre, a collection of fossils, animatronic dinosaurs and soft play facilities targeted firmly at a younger family audience. Top of the list is the famous Seaton Tramway, a three mile track which follows the floodable end of the Axe estuary, its service only of practical use for a handful of Colyton residents who want to go shopping at Aldi. But as the only tram system in the southwest it draws all the afficionados, plus who doesn't enjoy hopping aboard a heritage throwback to a bird hide in the middle of nowhere then riding back again? With trams running every 20 minutes it's a better service than many London suburbs. Geoff made a 20 minute video about the Seaton Tramway last year if you want to see what you're missing, like we did.
There isn't time to cram everything into a week's holiday so other places we didn't visit include the town's museum, the quarry caves further round the bay in Beer and the model-railway-focused oddity at Pecorama. They know how to appeal to Men Who Like Trains in Seaton. I really wanted to visit The Undercliffs, site of a massive landslip on Christmas Day 1839 when 800 million tons of rock collapsed replacing coastal farmland with a gapingchasm behind a long slumped slope. Even Queen Victoria came down to view that. A challenging footpath now follows the subtropical weirdness which has grown up since, but it's seven miles long with no access except at either end so we drove to Lyme Regis instead.
Lyme Regis is fossil central, and also a very pretty seaside town thus a key stop on the Dorset tourist trail. It's very nearly in Devon, indeed a half-mile hike up the cliffs from the harbour will see you across the boundary. That harbour is The Cobb, once a premier south coast port but now a picturesque refuge for bobbing boats. It's shielded by a broad sinuous breakwater of ancient providence whose upper level slopes seaward in contravention of all modern health and safety legislation so is wildly attractive. You'll have seen Meryl Streep standing on it in The French Lieutenant's Woman and also imagined it in Jane Austen's Persuasion because she loved a bit of Lyme too.
For fossils you need the other side of town, specifically the sweep of exposed shale beyond Church Cliffs where any slide or tumble could reveal a sheaf of ammonites or the skeleton of another enormous lizard. Many of the earliest dinosaur discoveries were made here, most notably by local fossil hunter Mary Anning who uncovered the first known ichthyosaur and plesiosaurs, the former in 1813 when she was just 12. Had the Geological Society of London accepted women members she might have been more famous in her own lifetime but instead male professors wrote up most of her discoveries and Mary had to rely on flogging fossil curios to make a living. Pleasingly she now has a crowdsourced statue overlooking the east bay, accompanied by her dog Tray who was lost to a landslide. If you fancy hunting fossils yourself, follow her gaze.
The heart of the town is a squish of old buildings at the mouth of the River Lym, rapidly sloping inland. The ancient bend between Bridge Street and Church Street is particularly tight so a real challenge for double deckers, indeed a ridiculous constriction to have to negotiate on Lyme Regis's sole A road. By driving carefully you can avoid damage to the Guildhall and to the town's museum, a multi-storey £9 attraction packed with history and, obviously, a heck of a lot of fossils. A separate £5 museum focuses solely on fossils and dinosaurs while for twice that you can hand hold a starfish or feed some mullet at the aquarium. And then there are the elephants.
Animal-themed sculpture trails are a big thing in many towns and cities, and currently in West Dorset it's elephants. A herd of almost 60 have been scattered across Lyme Regis, Bridport and West Bay, with a couple of outliers at Hive Beach to make finding them all even harder. You can't miss their jolly decorated fibreglass at all kinds of key locations, although to discover the full list of locations you'll need to download the Stampede-by-the-Sea app or pay £2 for a map, all proceeds to the local hospice. We reached the westernmost elephant just as a local retired couple finally completed the gargantuan task of seeing them all and felt the need to outpour all their anecdotes. After several minutes they were still griping about the shop that's only open on Wednesdays ("and she wouldn't let us in"), until we finally extricated ourselves with another "well done" and backed away.
We didn't have the wherewithal to find our way to the craft nexus at the Town Mill, nor the energy to climb the high street in search of fossil shops, nor the urge for a sit-down meal at The French Lieutenant's Bistro. Where we did ultimately end up was The Beach House Cafe with its bright red tables, evocative 1970s Letraset typeface and mighty bacon and sausage baguette. I really wanted to sample the 'Bread Pudding and Custard' advertised on the chalkboard outside but there were alas other places to see.
Beachy Head may be eyewateringly high but Golden Cap is another 30m above sea level, and at 191m the highest point on the entire south coast of England. It's located amid the rollercoaster cliffs between Charmouth and Bridport, a wedge-shaped projection loftier than the rest and visible for miles around. The lower slopes of Jurassic clay support a layer of weathered Upper Greensand on top, characteristically yellow in colour hence the name Golden Cap. It used to be yellower but over the last 100 years the seaward slopes have been increasingly covered with gorse and other vegetation, thus it looks more like Green Cap... at least until the next landslide. My photo was taken from Lyme Regis without a decent zoom, sorry, but closerphotos give a betteridea.
The coastal hamlet of Seatown is only a mile away but it's a whopping ascent, which is why you should never rely on Google Maps for hillclimbing. The approach from Charmouth is longer and more up and down so equally challenging, thus we took the easier route and drove to Langdon Woods where the ticket machine at the top of the National Trust car park is already at 160m. It was then a shady loop round a bluebelled forest, a brief earthen descent, a saunter across a buttercup meadow and finally 70 steps up the prismatic cap. I was barely out of breath. The summit is a broad grass plateau with sandy patches and yes, the views from either side are spectacular.
That's the view across Lyme Bay back to Lyme Regis, a sand-rimmed sweep beyond a fringe of gorse. The National Trust memorial stone is also on this side, remembering its chairman the Earl of Antrim in whose memory this gorgeous upland was purchased for the nation. Meanwhile the trig point is located on the eastern side overlooking Seatown and a distant Chesil Beach, plus further bush-covered slump. It was a lovely place to linger, and also a delight to finally visit a location I'd long lusted after on a map. It was great to know nobody along the entire south coast was higher, but it's perhaps worth saying that the Waitrose in Biggin Hill is 10m higher still, just not with such a cracking view.
When I was a child I had a well-thumbed puzzle book, one of several, which posed an intriguing question about this Dorset village. What's special about this sign, it asked, above a graphic of CHIDEOCK written in block capitals. I think I had to look up the answer but it tickled me, and it tickled me even more as we drove down a hill on the A35 and there was the village sign for real.
The answer if you haven't guessed is that all the letters in CHIDEOCK have horizontal line symmetry, i.e. the name looks exactly the same if you place a mirror above or below it. It may even be the longest such placename in England, hence its inclusion in the puzzle book, unless of course you know better. I would thus like to tell my nine year-old self that I have finally been to this unique location, and indeed nipped into the post office for a newspaper, which is pretty impressive on reflection.
Bridport is surrounded by little green hills but one truly stands out, a squat cone topped with pine trees, and that's Colmer's Hill. Stand in the town's main street and its summit is perfectly framed on the near horizon, a silhouette so simplistic it's what a child would draw. Get closer and it looks even better.
The hill is an uplift of sandstone about two miles west of the town on the Symondsbury estate, technically on private land but with multiple permissive tracks to the top. If driving leave your vehicle in the free car park by the bijou barn/shop/cafe cluster and try not to be too distracted by the bacon rolls and willow weaving workshops. The tiny hamlet of Symondsbury somehow supports a pub and primary school, beyond which turn right past the circa 1449 farmhouse and keep climbing. It is tempting to aim for the summit prematurely but that gets ridiculously steep, plus the footpath ahead is arguably more amazing than the hill. Shutes Lane is a 'holloway', a sunken footpath following a faultin the clay which climbs in a shady notch between two fields. It looks like somewhere hobbits would live.
The sides of the holloway are dark with green ferns and gnarled roots, and the higher you climb the steeper they get. The rock is also very easy to scratch so heavily inscribed with names, patterns, designs and even in one location the face of Homer Simpson. Our groom and best man insisted they were not responsible for one particularly prominent act of nominative graffiti. I first learned of the holloway's existence in an episode of Radio 4's Open Country, which you can listen to here, although they didn't get the dappled light and sprinkling of bluebells that added even further to the eerie experience. Continue west and Shute's Lane becomes Hell's Lane, another holloway descending to the village of North Chideock, but for Colmer's Hill you need to dogleg back at Quarry Cross and follow the sheep track across open pasture.
It's not quite so steep on this side, and at 101m hardly the toughest of climbs, but still affords excellentviews across West Dorset on the way up. The summit alas is surrounded by a ring of pine trees which may look excellent from a distance but blocks much of the highest panorama, plus goodness knows how the Ordnance Survey see much from the trig point. When you're ready to descend watch out for bluebells and sheep on the way down, plus currently a lot of the cutest lambs, and you could easily have the entire circuit completed on half an hour flat.
Bridport is a Saxon town with a former penchant for ropemaking, so much so that a nickname for the hangman's noose was once a 'Bridport Dagger'. You can tell it's old because it has a North Street, West Street, South Street and East Street, three of which meet at the town hall, which is also where the Tourist Information Office resides. Bridport peaked historically when King Charles II stayed here while fleeing to France in 1651, overnighting in an old inn that's now a charity shop. Where the town continues to score highly is as a cultural hub with multiple festivals and arts events throughout the year, plus a steady stream of minor musical acts and Radio 4-friendly comedians taking to the stage at the Electric Palace.
We turned up on market day with the main streets lined by veg-sellers and crafty stalls, which proved invaluable for wedding-present-purchasing reasons. It also meant a live band was playing 70s classics to toetapping pensioners in Bucky Doo Square (and no, nobody knows for sure why it's called that). Food is another Bridport plus, not just the fact there's a Waitrose but also the wide variety of local produce and baked goods available at all price points from hearty sausage rolls to elegant seafood dining. For the full backstory to everything try Bridport Museum on South Street - that's a fiver - or for a longer explore try the three mile Bridport Green Route circuit - see free leaflet. All that's really missing is some seaside, and thankfully that's only a brief hop away.
West Bay is Bridport's slightly down at heel cousin, a place for chips and crabbing, but also rightly renowned for maritime pleasure and as the site of 'that' beach. The East Cliff is a stunning hump of golden sandstone, best seen in sharp sunshine, and also the site of the first death in Broadchurch which was totally filmed here. Stomp out across the pebble ridge and you'll soon reach the site where Danny Latimer's body was found, thankfully no longer roped off with David Tennant and Olivia Colman taking notes.
These days the clifftop is barriered instead, the wiggly path up the grass slope now untrodden as safety concerns over subsidence take precedence. Walk the beach and you can see the evidence - multiple small rockfalls and the occasional massive slump where an entire stack of sand has collapsed exposing more of the rock behind to inexorable weathering. The most recent large fall was overnight on30th December, depositing a huge orange mound all the way down to the water's edge and blocking shoreward passage. The power of the sea has inevitably cleared away the landslide re-enabling an exhilarating beachstroll with a sensational backdrop, although you can already see the cracks where the next chunk of golf course might fall next.
The heart of West Bay is a smallharbour at the mouth of the River Bride, a refuge for those who enjoying messing around in small boats and dipping for crabs. Around the edge are souvenir shops and a few sturdy pubs, including The George which appears to be where all the bikers end up after they've roared into town and pulled up by the bus turnaround. Ice cream is available in a variety of locations and forms (I plumped for the Purbeck Lemon Ripple) but the true common denominator is fish and chips. Of the six kiosks by the harbour bridge five sell chips and four additionally fish, all I think owned by the same local franchise so it doesn't matter which you pick. The battered cod was soft, flaky, delicious and still sub-£10... and best of all the seagulls stayed well out of reach.
Other sights to see in West Bay include a small but lovingly-compiled museum, officially the Discovery Centre, which is based in a convenient Victorian chapel. As well as exhibits they do a four page leaflet in case you want to identify the chief Broadchurch locations from all three series, most of which are within a five minute walk, including the amusement arcade where the local newspaper was supposedly based and the apartment block that doubled up as the police station. The detectives often walked out along the East Pier because it meant the TV cameras could get the iconic cliffs in the background. And this is also the precise point where Chesil Beach begins, the breakwater cutting off any further longshore drift, should you be a pebble starting your long journey down to Portland.
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.
