Dorset
Our walk along the South West Coast Path included a substantial chunk of the Dorset coast, from the Devon/Dorset boundary to the west of Lyme Regis (which we crossed towards the end of our walk on 26th April 2013) to the end of the South West Coast Path at South Haven Point (which we reached on 28th May 2013). The individual legs of this section included a number of days when part of our walk was inland. This was partly because there were a number of substantial diversions because of landslips, partly because we sometimes struggled to get accommodation on the coast, and partly because we actually wanted to explore some inland countryside as well as included: Uplyme (in Devon) to West Bay; West Bay to Abbotsbury; Abbotsbury to Portland Bill; Portland Bill to Ferry Bridge; Ferry Bridge to Preston; Preston to Lulworth; Lulworth to Kimmeridge and Corfe Castle; Circuit from Corfe Castle to Kimmeridge and Chapman's Pool; Corfe Castle and Chapman's Pool to Swanage; Swanage to South Haven Point.
For some time, I'd had in mind to link up from the end of the South West Coast Path South Haven Point to the end of the Avon Valley Path in Christchurch, but before we had got round to doing this, we had some unexpectedly free time when staying at the Highcliffe Premier Inn (to the east of Christchurch) in December 2022, so we used the opportunity to walk from Highcliffe Castle to the entrance to Christchurch Harbour at Mudeford before returning to Highcliffe Castle and on to Chewton Bunny and the county boundary with Hampshire. That walk is described here. At the moment we have a gap between South Haven Point and Christchurch Harbour.
The photographs I have included higher on this page accurately describe what I have written about, but they don't give a very accurate picture of the Dorset coast in its entirety, where a complex geology which has created landscapes stretching from the fossil-rich cliffs around Charmouth to the chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks, with Chesil Beach and the Isle of Portland in between. Golden Cap, the highest point on the South West Coast Path is in Dorset, as is the impressive East Cliff to the east of West Bay, but most memorable of all were the spectacular (and scary in places) ascents and descents as we walked above the chalk cliffs to the west of Durdle Door. This was followed by further spectacular landscapes around Lulworth and Kimmeridge.
