Windy Weymouth Weekend
A windy Weymouth weekend describes the overwhelming weather condition that accompanied twenty-seven EFOG members over the Easter weekend.
Whilst the larger number travelled to Weymouth by train, I elected to join Louise, Pam, Fritz and Ian, who was driving. We left Wanstead at 6.30am, and had an easy journey to Weymouth with relatively little traffic on the roads. The roads we used through Hampshire and into Dorset took us through some lovely countryside, a few easy villages, and with great views of the magnificent Salisbury Cathedral and equally impressive Maiden Castle.
Shearing's Royal Hotel at Weymouth was reached by the five of us quite a while before other Group members began arriving, but getting out of the car on the sea-front prior to booking-in gave us an instant foretaste of the wind and wind-chill that was to stay with us all of our stay. There was sand blowing down the High Street and just about every other street, and we were soon tooth-crunching on it, too.
Saturday morning was bright – and windy, and chilly. We split into two main groups for our walking day, with Ken leading a walk of something like 9 miles, I believe, starting and finishing at Abbotsbury. I led an alternative shorter walk from Dorchester, which proved to be a nice-enough town although we didn't look around for too long. As we walked out of town, we visited the Neolithic henge and later Roman amphitheater of Maumbury Rings, which I thought would make a nice precursor of what was to come. At the edge of the town, a children's playground proved irresistible, and we had fun on swings, slides, a trampoline and a zip-wire.
The landscape opened out to rolling chalky countryside with the horizon ahead dominated by Maiden Castle - an Iron Age Hill Fort and the largest in Britain. We gained the top of the hill-fort then made our way back down to gain a footpath leading towards the west end of Dorchester. Sheep, cattle, skylarks and wheaters were all commented on during our walk along an easy-enough path. This eventually set us near to a roundabout on the busy A35; a footpath shown on my O.S. Map was not only non-visible on the ground, but would have entailed crossing the by-pass. Luckily(!) there was a brand new gravelled track leading in the direction we needed to go. A temporary fence which had presumably closed it during construction had been trodden down, which left the path open for us to follow. It led us to a farm track, which fortuitously passed underneath the A35. Chatting merrily, we walked up the track... to be met by a padlocked, barbed gate. A few feet away was a path leading between the houses to a Dorchester suburban road, but the padlocks and barbs were something of a deterrent. Somewhat reluctantly, we turned back to take the farm-track leading in the opposite direction conveniently to the access road we'd used to get to Maiden Castle. At the junction of our farm track and the road we desired was a locked, barbed gate! It took a bit of limbo-ing for each of us to get under the gate, but we did so, had a lunch-stop at a real caff (a very real caff!) in a Dorchester car-park/bus station, then caught the bus back to Weymouth. This was a 6.5 mile walk for those who'd preferred the shorter option: Fozi, Gill Light, Tina, Fred and myself.
Portland Bill is a bit of a strange place with something of the feel of a remote part of Britain. The villages are perhaps slightly down-at-heel, and much of the architecture a mix of military and prison. It's one of the few parts of Dorset that has much industry, and this of course is the quarrying of Portland Stone. Our route followed the SW Coastal Path, so of course we were well accompanied by winds and wind chill.
Monday morning dawned not with the wind and sunshine as the previous days, but with wind and drear cloud. After breakfast Louise, Pam, Fritz, Ian and myself set off for home, choosing the route we'd travelled down on for our return journey. We didn't take the prescribed M25 route, and – considering the Easter Monday – had an easy journey back to Wanstead.
Paul Ferris, 2nd April 2013
for an alternative view of this trip - click here