Just for a change today, and because much of the Coast Path in these parts is not actually anywhere near the coast, we decided to head inland for a circular walk of about 7½ miles. It was a green walk again, starting and ending at our campsite.

We began our walk and soon ended up on a path variously called The Liberty Trail and The Monarchs Way. During our stay here we’ve noticed a few more than usually helpful footpath signposts. Some posts on our walk back from Golden Cap were engraved with Ordnance Survey map coordinates; I’d not seen that before. Today, as we were making our way along multi-named path, we spotted a helpful explanatory note. When we arrived at Charmouth we had seen a pub sign saying that King Charles II escaped in 1651. Today’s footpath informed us that the monarch made his way along thios route after the battle of Worcester. A little light dawned on this historically uneducated individual: clearly King Charlie wasn’t only the second Charlie to come to our throne but had also come a clear second at the battle of Worcester. Following this result, he made his way via this path to the south coast.

‘T was a varied and pleasantly different walk. Some of it followed a babbling brook though wildlife seemed a little short. A couple of Orange Tip butterflies zoomed past on the still stiffish breeze but weren’t stopping to pose for the camera. Our best nature chance was given by those organism that don’t run away – plants. We spotted a whole bunch of Wood Anemones, Cuckoo Flower, Lesser Celandine and a small crop of Greenwinged Orchids.

On our return to the campsite, while supping a refreshing cider or three, a Pied Wagtail gave The Beast a chance to come into its own. I’d just managed to sneak up close enough and grab this shot when one of the campsite quad bikes drove by and scared my subject away. The nice lady driving the quad bike actually apologized for scaring it. How considerate of her. I reassured her that I’d managed a few shots before it took to the wing. This’ll do.

One of Billy Bailey’s big advantages over our previous generation of touring living accommodation is that Billy has a very swish sunroof. The light this admits turns him into more of a travelling conservatory. We love it, though it does mean that we need to think about pulling the blind across if we want to avoid being awoken by daylight beyond about 4:00 AM in midsummer. At this time of year, though, too much early light is not a problem and the roof remains clear.

Our unobstructed view through the roof of one small section of Britain’s air space this morning made a major change glaringly obvious. The four square feet of sky above my head was crossed by two aircraft contrails. Carol looked outside to widen the view beyond Billy’s four square feet and counted no fewer than 19 contrails. Clearly, we were flying again. The BBC Radio 4 news confirmed that which was, to us at least, no longer news.

Obviously plane contrails are going to make some difference to the amount of clarity in the sky but I (I suspect we – nobody) had hitherto not realized just how much of a difference. Each contrail remains for a considerable time. As it remains it spreads. As it spreads it closes gaps in the sky with other spreading contrails. Spreading contrails criss-cross and thicken. New flights add their contrails to the mix and, quite soon, the entire sky is blanketed to a greater or lesser extent by a pretty much constant contrail haze.

As we walked down to investigate Lyme Regis, as well as taking in the very varied views [Ed: couldn’t resist the alliteration, eh?] of the countryside, we also kept glancing up at the haziness of the blue sky now less full of sunshine than had been the case over the previous five or six days during our flight ban. If I ever wanted a demonstration of the existence of global dimming, here it was being very graphically provided.

On our walk into Lyme Regis we crossed a small footbridge over a sun-dappled stream flowing throw a wooded area. I noticed a flashing movement just above the water. The flashing movement came to rest on a rock in stream and began curtseying. It was a dipper. I’d been stalking a very nervous dipper in France last year and failed to get a shot. This delightful little chap was everything but nervous and seemed unconcerned about our presence, continuing to gather a beakful of grubs as we watched and clicked. Once again, since we were on an 8-mile wander, I didn’t have the big, heavy lens but my trusty 300mm, more portable lens did a reasonable job.

Lyme Regis was pleasant enough for a seaside town. It seemed very well equipped with so-called amusement arcades and certainly had almost countless fish and chip shops. It does seem to lack a good pub, though; we saw two selling appealing beer in an unappealing location and one in an appealing location selling unappealing beer. Drat and blast!

I really am going to have to consider lugging that big lens along on walks.

Some years ago I saw a TV program about a man with a superb sounding job: he was the swanherd at Abbotsbury swannery. We are only about 20 miles from Abbotsbury and were very keen to see visit the swans. Besides, we’d have to drive back to the ring road around Dorchester where we’d spied a very-rare-in-these-parts McDonalds with its wonderful McWiFi. It would also make a nice break for our legs from tramping the Coast Path.

Swans have apparently been at Abbotsbury since before Henry VIII. Monks had been keeping (and eating) swans a while when good ol’ Henry came along, dissolved the monastery and grabbed the swans. He made a present of his booty to some local mover and shaker whose name I forget.

The current swanherd, accompanied by what appear to be a couple of trainee swanherds, was wired for sound and gave a very interesting talk about the swans as they were fed with wheat, which happens three times a day. We were at the midday feed. Being spring, the swans are busy nesting and egg-laying. Nesting in a large colony is not swans’ normal habit but here it seems to be quite natural, maybe because of the lengthy history. Abbotsbury lies on an 8 mile lagoon protected by Chesil Beach. The lagoon is shallow and contains a lot of easily accessible natural grazing for the swans so the wheat is a bit on an extra luxury. Though ringed, the swans are free to fly away and remain simply because they want to. Currently there are thought to be about 600 birds there, with between 100 and 150 pairs nesting. The numbers rise to about 1500 in winter. 5 Australian black swans have also gate crashed the party and, though not encouraged, are not turned away. Unlike our aircraft, the swans were flying, especially when food was on offer. Cheap it ain’t @ £9.50 each but it’s a fascinating experience.

Our legs didn’t get the entire day off. After the swans we called in to Burton Bradstock and wandered along a bit more coast. Our target, West Bay, turned out to be particularly dull-looking but on the way we passed a golf course with one particular hole that looked very far from dull. The tee was up on the high part of the cliff, the green was about 75 feet below; there was no fairway being a simple par 3. 🙂 As a non-golfer, I watched, fascinated.

On our return walk from the less-than-enticing West Bay, we watched what appeared to be a little seagull courtship. One, I’m guessing a male, was repeatedly flying back and forth, his beak loaded with nesting material, in front of what I’m also assuming to be a couple of females.

Well, it has to be done. Even when the Icelanders are once again causing us problems, this time by donating us geologically large plumes of volcanic ash rather than by losing astronomical amounts of our cash, there comes a time when everyone has to play tourist and do typically touristy things. In regards to the coast of Dorset, that means visiting the twin tourist traps of Lulworth Cove and nearby Durdle Door.

We drove to Lulworth Cove and investigated the tourist car park: £4 for a reasonable amount of time to take in the sights. Back up the street near a very quaint little church was some street parking that seemed to be free to those not afraid of walking an extra half mile each way. We took the oh-so-us cheap option with the much needed extra exercise.

Lulworth Cove is a magnificent natural harbour with twin headlands almost encompassing a sizeable safe haven like the arms of a seat belt. Unfortunately the most interesting parts of the cliffs have been deemed dangerous, or maybe just too badly eroded by countless tourist feet, so you cant get a really clear shot showing the narrow, protective entrance to the harbour but a wide angle lens gives something of an impression from the sections of cliff that do remain accessible.

From Lulworth Cove, the so-called coastal path becomes more like a paved coastal motorway up which approximately half of humanity swarms to gain the high ground to the west before heading off the mile or so to Durdle Door, a famous and much photographed archway of rock with a gaping hole beneath. As one approaches on the coastal motorway, the remaining half of humanity swarms down another motorway-like footpath from the horrendous-looking Durdle Door campsite, scarring the high ground with lines of identical-mobile homes. The merging two halves of humanity tend mostly to be wearing trainers or flip-flops which makes one feel a little out of place bedecked in supposedly sensible walking boots.

Durdle Door may be impressive but it suffers from the fact that the sun is always behind it (south) so, other than on a cloudy day or at some ridiculously hour in the early morning or evening, photographing it is a serious challenge. It’s also somewhat ruined by the collected humanity swarming on the pebble beach at it’s feet.

I couldn’t help but be mightily amused by a helpful sign above steps leading down to said pebble beach at Durdle Door: “Owing to the gradient of the cliff, some of the steps are steep.” Really? No shit, Sherlock! Who’d have thought it? Because the cliff is steep, the steps are steep. Well I never.

Carol’s ice cream was very pleasant but we’ve seen it now and won’t be bothering again; there are much more pleasant parts of the Dorset coast.

Today’s forecast mentioned the possibility of rain. However, the morning dawned dry, if overcast, so we went into Swanage to investigate. It turned out to be a pleasant enough if somewhat windy front with a few interesting shops, chief among which was a fishmongers where we bought a Grey Mullet for our evening meal.

We’re having trouble figuring out where local Dorset folk do their main food shopping. Wareham has a small Sainburys with little in the way of choice and Swanage seemed to have a small Budgen with similarly little choice. We’ve yet to see a decently sized supermarket with anything approaching a wide range of goods. Neither have we seen one selling fuel. If this means that locals buy from small, specialist shops, then more power to their elbow. It may be so but I remain unconvinced.

We returned to our campsite with our booty. Yesterday, though we started in an area surrounded by nothing but empty space, in the late afternoon a 6-berth van accompanied by two cars and four rugrats turned up. Where did they pitch? Right next to us. This whole section of campsite was completely empty but they went right next to us. This may have been because they were allocated that pitch number but if so, I don’t understand the pitch allocation algorithm. There’s 200 pitches here – why cram people together? The kids were let loose and balls began flying close to Billy with rugrats charging across our pitch in hot pursuit. We weren’t going to relax.

Down the road is the Caravan Club’s site. We called in. They had spare space. We decided to write off the money invested in the previous campsite and moved. It’s more crowded but it’s more peaceful. We’re expert at drop-of-the-hat caravan moving. Lesson learned.

For a spot of relaxation and fresh air, we went into Wareham to try their so-called Two Rivers Walk. Wareham is an old Saxon town surrounded by an impressive earthwork “wall”. It must have been quite an effort to build it. The walk went outside the wall following a river (or two) littered with moored boats. The clouds even cleared and the sun shone. A seal put in an appearance rummaging around in one of the rivers but wasn’t close enough for a snapshot. Any suggested rain never arrived.

Fingers crossed for our new situation.