One goes mad in Dorset..

Phew. can you have sun stroke without the sun? My head is  a small blast furnace but there hasn't been direct sun all day..

Anyway. WOW. Mini road trip was amazing. So as not to bore you silly I plan to annotate write up with pix as soon as i have found out how to upload them  (my new camera has had a good run in - I have finally discovered where the zoom is, closely followed by noticing you can take pix in monchrome. Ooh! Expect lots of moody cameos of Edinburgh fringe life soon.)

I didn't make it even to Devon in the end!! but I sure packed a lot in in Dorset :  Sandbanks, the posh end of Poole, where beach huts go for a million quid and the marina looks as good as Monaco, frankly;  Studlands, where I beached and paddled happily for the afternoon, with no shops, no cafes, just lovely sea and dunes and my own hand packed picnic  and you could watch the Brittany Ferries come in and out (got there via the cutest chain ferry in the world, only slightly shorter than the crossing span itself)..

Then on to Swanage, a more traditional seaside town, which was en fete for a whole week! (I was SOOO lucky with timings) so I got to see the Red Arrows parachute out the sky, followed by amazing fireworks over water, and a swing band, flaming poi on the sands,  adult sandcastles (oo er), and much general partying. Yes, arranged just for me, on an average Wednesday :-)

 I had many thoughts about how the death of the British seaside is wildly over rated, at least if it's done right - and this was JUST RIGHT - I felt I had a full evening's entertainment, and I gave away dosh in return quite happily to the fish and chips place, the crepe stall, the collection buckets, the wine bar, the pub!. I only wish I 'd found the outdoors seafood restaurant stalls that did amazing looking bowls of mussels and white wine by the pier first!  (Grey's Seafood I think - familiar to anyone?)  It was sooo French - I almost forget how near you really are to France there - and yet also so English - it felt like the whole of Dorset had turned out for the Red Arrows and there was a sort of open patriotism  abounding for their skill and derring-do, which is so rare these days (and so rarer still to find untainted by any apparent BNP influence). I have loadsa pix which major_clanger  at least may appreciate.. It really was a fabulous night that left a huge smile on my face as i staggered home.

.. to my overnight stop at the LAST AVAILABLE ACCOMMODATION IN DORSET I think, which luckily turned out to be a rather amazing huge converted farmhouseand courtyar  in a village called KIngston, now used for weddings and b and b  ( my room was a converted barn I think - it was the size of one, but en suite and with fantastic beams) with stunning views over the Isle of Purbeck  (which isn't an island) and Corfe Castle (which really is). . 

Which was where I went the following am - I've wanted to go to Corfe Castle ever since I read Keith Roberts' Pavane as a child - and it was just as hauntedly romantic as I'd dreamed. Many many more pictures as i scrampled up, over and down :) By this time it was so hot and sullen the water was being squeezed out the sky like water out a cloth, and my head was throbbing. This was when I decided to move on to nearer sea air again, a good idea as only a quick skip to...

Lulworth Cove! Well actually more accurately the Durdle Door - which I'd glimpsed from the train from Soton to Exeter a couple of times and longed to see properly. It's *magnificent* - a sort of lava flow of limestone running down to the sea out of steep cliffs, into which the water has eroded a door. It's a fair old slurry to get down to it (and  a hellubva climb to get back) and as it was treatening again to rain and greyish I hadn't dragged my swimming gear too. I soooo wish I  (I was certainly warm enough to swim!) - I now have to go back as i *have* to swim through the door!!! (Is watery Narnia on the other side I wonder??) the rain gathered as  i fought my way back up the cliffs - I was wet through but warm at the top - ick!! But just so glad I saw it in all its grandeur before the rain caught up.

That pretty much tired me out so I started planning a route home via Dorchester, rather than holding out for the planned end point at the edge of Devon, namely Lyme Regis - I'd done the literary thing at Corfe Castle and I didn't want my memories of Swanage to be tainted by the miserableness that is the seaside in the rain. . Dorchester appealed for Hardy connotations (and LUNCH - not available at Durdle Door!) but turned out to be fairly dull - I'd exited the Isle of Purbeck region without realising, and there was that kind of sick readjustment to normality as you realise "Oh, everything isn't startlingly beautiful any more". So I lunched slowly (and late) in a nice cafe (with warm Dorset apple cake and yellow thick cream - mmm) , untill it became clear a  last swim wasn't really on the cards (despite the fact that i'd picked up in Waterstones  a copy of the one book i most wanted, Wild Swim  on unusual places in rivers and lakes to swim outside in the UK!!)

So home , Jeeves. The road through Lyndhurst was STILL throttled with traffic even at 7 at night (ag!)  so I diverted through some ridiculously tiny back roads (all hail Sat Nav!! the answer to life the universe and everything is.. the B42) narrowly avoiding several 4 by 4s and made my way back to the M27 through Burley instead. I was curious to see it anyway, because Eeva had mentioned it as the "witchy place in the New Forest" and I thought I owed it to the pagans on my list. Well yes: Burley has 2 pubs and 7 shops of which about 5 sell nothing except what could moderately be called "witch kitsch". Worse than a Worldcon dealer's room, honest. Szdly all shut, or I'd have bought blue_condition a Hello Kitty bendover witch in corset  (no, really) and julia_winolja dragon. Ah well!! There was  a notice board I ran to in my curiousity to see what had got Burley so hung up on witchery. But it said nothing at all!!! Anyone know what's afoot in Burley?? EDIT: Aha!