Corfe Castle, Kimmeridge and Chapman's Pool (circuit)

Walked by Sally and Richard, Sunday 26th May 2013.

About 13.5 miles of walking, just 4.5 miles on (mostly diverted) route of South West Coast Path. 7 hours including stops.

Click here for all our photos from this walk.

This was a rather different day, because we were always at some distance from the coast. This is because the route of the South West Coast Path has been diverted inland between Kimmeridge and Chapman's Pool, but more significantly because we had always planned to take advantage of the fact that we were staying inland at Corfe Castle to explore the Isle of Purbeck more fully. We had a lovely walk on a dry, sunny day and I didn't have to carry a rucksack.

I had been disturbed in the night by what I think is the boiler at Alford House, so hadn't slept well, but Susie Mitchell cooked us a pleasant breakfast (scrambled egg and bacon) and we met the remaining guests, a family of grandmother, mother and son from Maidstone. The son has serious food allergies, which clearly create some problems, but he was well behaved and they were all friendly. Susie's husband was just leaving with the other walkers as we sat down for breakfast. We left Alford House around 9am and found the scenic route down to the village centre across the common. There was a queue out the door of the bakers, so we went into a delicatessen and bought more of the Bridport Gourmet Dorset pork pies - with chutney for Richard and apricots for me. We then took the passageway to the west of the Castle. We followed this through to a minor road then crossed the road and turned left onto a bridleway towards Cocknowle.

After about half a mile we climbed up onto the ridge and walked along it. This is the ridge of the Purbeck Hills, which outcrops at Binden Hill and Flower's Barrow at one end and Ballard Point and the Isle of Wight at the other. The ridge essentially separates off the Isle of Purbeck to the south. There were good views to Poole Harbour and we could make out the spit at Sandbanks in the distance - past the end of the South West Coast Path!

We passed a campsite below us to the north and descended to a minor road, advising a young woman who was trying to get down to Kimmeridge as quickly as possible, but who only had printed A4 pages of 1:50000 maps. We climbed back to the top of the ridge and continued, past Grange Arch (a folly built in 1740) to a car park at the edge of the Lulworth Ranges.

We now needed to descend into the valley between the ridge we were on and the one which includes Tyneham Cap and Swyre Head. This is the valley in which Tyneham sits, and we had passed the hamlet of Steeple beneath us. The bells and organ from Tyneham Church were moved to Steeple, and I guess Tyneham and Steeple would be similar places now had the Army not requisitioned the land around Tyneham as part of the war effort in 1943.

We descended by a track, which zig-zagged back down to the road to Kimmeridge, busy this morning with (amongst others) a cycle race and several vintage cars. Thankfully we were not on the road for long before taking a track down to Steeple Leaze Farm. We had passed a couple of nice looking camp sites (tents not caravans) on the way down the road and there was another one here. We stayed on the track through the muddy valley bottom, then climbed up to the next ridge, now with good views to Clavell Tower and Kimmeridge Bay.

We walked along the top of the ridge to the road above Kimmeridge, then crossed the road, now on the official SWCP diversion and very briefly on yesterday's route. We took a stony track up Smedmore Hill. The track became less stony and eventually it reached the edge of the ridge, with good views, but there were fences on either side of the track and quite a lot of other people about, including a group of cyclists who seemed to expect we would wait for them at a gate. In principle, I've nothing against cyclists, but they do seem to assume they take priority over others - we had already had one today who cycled through without stopping whilst we held a gate open for him and then there had been the racers whizzing down the hill, frequently in packs and on the wrong side of the road - with a load hailer announcing that other road users should look out for the cyclists. Hmmm.

We reached the top of Swyre Hill, now on access land so we could walk where we wanted and - even better - there was a bench. We stopped for lunch and watched a helicopter land down in Kimmeridge Bay. We'd heard emergency vehicles earlier, so assume this was the Air Ambulance.

After lunch we continued along the ridge, but now with views ahead to Houns-tout Cliff and St Aldhelm's Head and down to Encombe House. We reached a car park and continued in a similar direction along a minor road. Just before Kingston, we passed through pretty woodland, with a path signposted to Houns-tout Cliff. We were slightly puzzled by the fact that the diversion was not marked as going that way, but decided to play it safe and follow the marked diversion, along a road from Kingston. We later discovered that the coastal path is closed on the Chapman's Pool side of Houns-tout Cliff - not quite as shown on the version of the diversion map that we had. Definitely a case of better safe than sorry!

Kingston has two churches, one pub and no ice cream shops! It was horrendously busy, largely I suspect as a result of people heading to the pub for Sunday lunch, but there was a steady stream of people walking down towards Chapman's Pool and Houns-tout Cliff, so perhaps that was also partially to blame. It was an attractive road, through woodland, which eventually became a track through open countryside, complete with grazing sheep.

There were several paragliders up above Chapman's Pool - I'm not sure if they had taken off from St Aldheim's Head or disobeyed the path closure to take off from Houns-tout Cliff.

We came within sight of the sea and reached the end of the coast path diversion. We rejoined the coast path proper for about half a mile, as it looped around behind Chapman's Pool, then we turned off onto the Purbeck Way, north towards Corfe Castle.

The Purbeck Way took us through Hill Bottom, then up and left into Coombe Bottom and so to the B3069 about a mile to the east of Kingston. From here we could see the Isle of Wight, and after crossing the road, we could see the steam train on the Swanage Railway chugging its way between Corfe Castle and Swanage. We descended, at first on a stony track and then around field edges. We crossed the corner of a smallholding and emerged onto Corfe Common. From this point it should have been easy, but it wasn't! The Castle was not visible and we slightly lost our way in navigating boggy bits on the common. We soon sorted it out and we were back at Alford House just before 4pm.

We dropped off most of our stuff and went into Corfe Castle looking for ice cream - easier said than done because the village was packed and there were queues out the door of the ice-cream shop - and I really wanted a tub in any case. We eventually found tubs in a little sweet shop and said hello to the family who were staying at Alford House. In the evening we ate at the Castle Inn - the food was fine but it was packed too. There were two large groups - one appeared to comprise 3 couples and the other 4 couples, and each couple had an average of about 2.5 children! I don't think I have ever seen so many children in one pub at one time!

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