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| goodbye Isle of Wight |
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| seagulls riding for free to Southampton |
We retraced our steps back from Ventnor to Newport, where we changed buses and arrived at the Red Funnel terminal in E. Cowes in plenty of time before sailing on the Red Osprey. It was warmer than the last few days and the trip back to Southampton was pleasant. We had a surprisingly delicious breakfast on board and were soon tying up downtown. I felt we were in different country as we walked to the National Express coach station - ultra modern glass buildings and shiny new shopping centres all about us. Even the people had more bounce in their step. The bus was on time, sort of, and it was a three-hour stop-everywhere trip, going through the towns of Bournemouth, Poole, Wareham, and the village of Osmington where we could see in the distance the famous White Horse figure, cut in 1808 into the limestone hill. We arrived at the Esplanade in Weymouth, Dorset just as the sun came out behind threatening clouds. Nothing seemed to have changed at all since I had been there in 70s - I immediately recognized the long row of Georgian houses, the beautiful sandy beach and the iconic tall blue and red Jubilee clock tower in the centre of the Esplanade. Our next B&B was a twenty minute walk away, 12 Westbourne Road, where our host Julie was waiting to greet us and show us around. We walked back down the Esplanade to have supper at a fish and chips shop, The Sea Chef. Marie had the beef and kidney pie and battered minty mushy peas and I had a tasty beef pie with fries. The place was crowded with young families and crying babies but he food was hot and tasty.
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| 12 Westbourne Rd, Weymouth |
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| off in the distance from the coach - the Osmington Horse |
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| Weymouth Beach, voted no. 1 in England |
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| along the Esplanade, Weymouth |
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| soon this will be a mass of vacationers, English style |
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| Weymouth sand sculptures, with possibly the world's best sand for sculpting |
Above 4 pictures : from top, Georgian style hotels, no vacancies while we were there, what is believed to be the actual bathing machine used by King III in 1789, the cenotaph to commemorate the city's war dead, and me leaning against the Jubilee Clock erected in 1888 to celebrate the 50th year of her reign.
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| George III, the Mad King, Weymouth |
The next morning we planned to take the bus to Portland, the next town a mile or so across the causeway, then walk about the cliffs to Portland Bill and back over Chesill Beach, a spot I well remembered visiting before. The day began sunny and clouded up in the afternoon but we didn't get the rain forecast and ended up having a fantastic five hour walk on the Coast Path. Most of the walk was through long abandoned Portland stone quarries that open up right onto the sea, home now to the brown hares we occasionally encountered. From these quarries the stone, a limestone from the late Jurassic period, 135-140 million years ago, has been used in the construction of St. Paul's Cathedral, the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Buckingham Palace and many other memorable buildings. Extraction actually began in the early 17th century, though the remains of Rufus Castle, which was visible to us on the footpath, was probably built with Portland stone in 1080, and these quarries on the Isle are still working. We saw many examples of this stone recently as well in France - the gravestones for British personnel killed in the First and Second World Wars were made out of Portland stone. We would often come across old pulleys and scaffolding used to lower the cut stone into waiting barges, sometimes hundreds of feet below to the sea. The main non-working quarry is the Tout Quarry and the smaller Stone Quarry where we discovered a delightful sculpture park displaying a collection of various animals and figures carved in Portland stone. The very dangerous path (leave the kids at home) was mostly crushed stone but there were long stretches of short grass my feet preferred - it was a walk of over six kilometres, windy at times but mostly warm whenever the sun came out. We met a few people doing the same thing. All stopped to say hello and showed the typical friendliness of trail walkers this country is so full of.
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| in the distance you can make out the Portland Bull lighthouse |
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| octopus rock carving |
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| Portland stone blocks |
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| Common Gorse - these have very large and sharp thorns |
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| very old apple tree and blossoms |
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| almost at the end of our Coast Tail walk, Portland and Weymouth behind us |
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| view fit for a King |
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| Portland |
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| these flowers were everywhere growing out of the rock but I can't identify them |
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| Chesil Beach, Portland, Dorset |
We had a delicious lunch at the Lighthouse restaurant, the Lobster Pot, a ham and cheese ploughman and whitefish followed up with a blackberry and custard crumble. Returning along the cliff tops for another three kilometres we had glorious views of the sea and finally the town and the curving Chesil Beach with Weymouth in the distance. I pocketed one of the smooth flint stones to remember this fantastic 18 mile-long beach, one of three such beaches and the largest in the UK called 'tombolo'. The pebbles go from fist-sized where we stood to pea-sized as it moves further along down the coast. I had found a section of the beach near where we lived in Nova Scotia similar to this and collected these type of stones to paint on. For as far as I could see I figured I had more than a lifetime of perfect tiny canvases that were crying out for my brush. It was getting late and it had been a long day so we caught the bus back into Weymouth, picked up supper at Marks and Spencer and packed for our return to Portsmouth. Although it was too early in the season to watch a Punch and Judy show on the beach or see the famous sand sculptures, Weymouth and Portland Bill turned out exactly as I had hoped, and remembered.
gws
