Swanage to South Haven Point

Walked by Sally and Richard, Tuesday 28th May 2013.

About 8 miles of walking, almost all on the route of the South West Coast Path.

Click here for all our photos from this walk.

The final day!

We slept extremely well at Rivendell Guest House but woke to the rain that had been promised. Actually it wasn't as bad as I had feared. It was basically drizzly, with occasional slightly heavier showers.

Breakfast (scrambled egg and salmon with muffin - lovely) was served from 8.30am, then we stopped to buy sandwiches and cards on our way through Swanage, so it was slightly after 9.30pm when we rejoined the South West Coast Path on the Swanage Seafront. We walked along the seafront for a while, then took an uphill road that took us slightly inland, past various hotels, guest houses and apartments. We turned right onto Ballard Road and cut through the Ballard Estate to rejoin the clifftop.

We crossed a small valley then climbed onto Ballard Down. We rounded Ballard Point and walked along fairly level to cliffs to Handfast Point (also known as 'The Foreland') which is the headland off which Old Harry Rock sits. Technically I think that only one of the stacks is Old Harry, whilst another is his wife. I am really not sure about the others, so I will go own referring to the whole lot as 'Old Harry Rocks'. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount you could see of the headland and the stacks - I think I've read somewhere that you can't see them at this stage but I thought the views were pretty good.

From Handfast Point we descended towards Studland, and went to look at the little church which was apparently built before the Norman conquest. Before going into the church we stumbled across the church hall, where they were serving refreshments. We didn't really need cake, but it would have been churlish to refuse and we paid just £3 for one tea, one coffee and two pieces of homemade cake. It turned out that the refreshments were in honour of the flower festival in the Church, so after finishing our tea/coffee and cake we had a quick look at the flower festival. A robin had found its way into the Church and was resisting attempts to encourage it out, so we didn't hang about, reckoning that the robin would be unlikely to come down from the rafters whilst lots of people were watching it.

We were expecting a diversion around Studland, but not too sure where it would be (and I'm still not sure, since we seemed to follow the route shown on the signs and were actually closer to the coast that the route shown on the map!). The only issue is that a landslip prevents access from the path from 'South Beach carpark' to the beach, or vice versa. However, we didn't want to get onto the beach in that direction! We followed the footpath around to the World War II Fort Henry, with an exhibition about 'Operation Smash', a rehearsal for the D Day landings which took place on Studland Beach. We then followed a path back around to the 'Middle Beach carpark', and this was where we joined the beach for the final three miles of the South West Coast Path.

It was just about high tide, so walking on the beach was initially difficult, since the choice was to walk on the soft sand above the high tide mark, or to walk on the firmer moist sand and risk getting wet! We were also looking for somewhere to eat lunch, but there was a marked lack of suitable places to sit. Eventually we settled for what should have been the site of a ‘Slackline Event’, but this had been cancelled because of the weather.

We walked on, passing a very small number of other people, mostly dog walkers. We reached the part of the beach that is - in theory - frequented by naturists. However the joy of the inclement weather was that we saw absolutely no-one else in this section, whatever their state of dress or undress. There were good views back to Old Harry Rocks, with a square rigged ship nearby, and a fair amount of shipping emerged from Poole Harbour.

We had arranged to meet my sister Chris around 1.30pm at the end of the path, with the possibility of her walking towards us if she arrived before us, but she rang to say she had missed the 1pm ferry from Sandbanks. We rounded the corner to Shell Bay and saw the later ferry coming across the channel. Amazingly, we reached the end of the South West Coast Path at almost exactly 1.30pm. We also arrived just in time to wave to Chris as she drove her car off the ferry! Our timing could not have been better.

We took some photos of the End of Path marker then went to meet Chris. She took some photos of both of us at the end of the path - with her dog Max posing too. Then we took Max for a walk, back the way we had come. Just half a mile or so though, not all 630 miles...well, not yet! The South West Coast Path had been an amazing adventure, and we'd done it.