Feb 4 2013

Feeding time at Abbotsbury Swannery

HONKING, hissing, gliding, swans are teeming with silver sunrays on the Fleet Lagoon. Masses of moorhens march on Chesil Beach.

M’colleague Stephen Banks showers scores of swans with birdseed.

I’m lying down, getting covered in swan poo, trying to get the perfect shot of one stretching its wings, like an angel.

We’re here for Watershed PR, to collect photos and information for Abbotsbury Swannery’s Facebook Page and Twitter account. (A tough job, but someone’s got to do it).

The Swanherd rolls up with a barrow of seed, and leaves us to it.

Mass feeding is an extraordinary sight. I’ve never been this close before. Seething beaks and backs and feathers jostle for food. Droplets glisten at beaks.

Long necks curve and plunge head-first into the lagoon, like so many hunch-backed sea monsters.

Some still sport the cygnets’ vestigial tawny plumage.

A couple of black swans lurk at the back.

A few daring birds waddle up to the barrow and trough straight from it, boldly.

The Swannery won’t open to visitors until next month, but behind the scenes Spring slowly unfurls. Sticky buds cluster on bare branches. Emerald spikes of daffodils shoot skywards. Trunks, wrinkly with lichen, blink in the weak February light.

A wheelbarrow loiters near a small bonfire. The Swanherd clears scrub. Nearby are displayed sepia photos of swanherds through the ages – Gregory Gill (1879-1922) and Fred ‘Leckie’ Lexster (1950-1975).

Swans have flocked to the Fleet Lagoon ever since the Benedictine monks at St Catherine’s Chapel started farming them in the 11th century. There’s a wonderful sense of timelessness here. Bliss.

May 13 2012

Piano playing on Portland

‘WHO’D want to live anywhere else, eh?’ asks my friend Nick, as I drive up, up onto Portland.

I’m worrying about how to get to Tout Quarry, so I don’t have much chance to glance down, where the yellow curve of Chesil Beach spoons with Lyme Bay.

But he’s right. And I’m awestruck. It’s Mediterranean. It’s Jurassic. It’s fantastic.

We’re off to grab a piece of the Cultural Olympiad. This afternoon, some dude has dragged a piano up to the clifftop and plans to serenade islanders with strains of Schubert and Chopin.

I pull on my wellies and trot after Nick, who knows these parts of old. I vaguely remember that Tout Quarry is haunted by a circle of Dutch artists who sculpt weird and wonderful shapes out of the masonry.

I’m not prepared for how wild and beautiful it is. We walk under an archway and out onto the edge of the island. The sky’s an eye-popping blue and the sun beats down on the shimmering sea.

A skylark squeaks and zooms upwards. Heaps of fallen stone crag and jut in dangerous piles. And there, dancing on a patch of grass like dryads of old, are a group of Royal Manor Art College pupils.

They’re accompanied by concert pianist Anthony Hewitt, aka the olymPianist. He’s cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats, with his piano following in the BeethoVAN, doing 27 al fresco recitals in 21 days.

It’s a strangely sweet spectacle, here in the open air, listening to the tinkling of ivories and admiring the dancers. I move to the edge of the cliff and peer over.

The water is indigo and translucent down below, lapping at pebbles and falling rock.

Chesil Beach and the sides of the island form a sweeping ‘S’ shape, swathes of yellow and green and blue.

Cotton wool clouds scud past mossy mounds. Amazing. This could be Cyprus.

Typical Kimberlins (that’s what Portlanders call us mainlanders), we manage to get lost on the way back. Nick heroically scales a hill to see where we are, while I hang back, worried we’ll get crushed in a cliff fall.

A big rabbit – or is it a hare? – leaps and bounds up ahead. “Look! Rabbit!” I squeal. “Ssh, don’t say that!” reprimands Nick. I forgot – legend has it, back in quarrying days, that rabbits only surfaced just before a rockfall. (Considered a sign of bad luck, the R-word is still banned today. If you must mention them, say ‘bunnies’ instead).

Back in the quarry, faces loom and jut out of stone. There’s an elephant, a chair, sharks, whales, Aztec-like cairns, there’s an ammonite – is it sculpted, or is it a fossil? And what looks like a very nice pair of lady lumps.

Nick says there’s loads more to see – sculptures of a man falling down the cliff, and even the whole of somebody’s front room, with a fireplace and everything. I must come back and explore. For now, my iPhone battery has run down. No more photos. End of story.

Mar 6 2011

Chilling out at Chesil Cove

WE taste the salt on our lips as soon as we sit down.

Portland is a pale blonde streak of pebbles bleached by time and tide. The sea’s a deep and heart-stopping blue. This is Chesil Cove, although as the sun beats down, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s an off-duty Maldive.

We sit under the sea wall, currently being shored up by Defra, munching an impromptu picnic of sandwiches and strawberries. We squint seawards – what we think is a seal turns out to be a cormorant, diving for fish.

The Cove House Inn, which hosts a raucous music festival (big cider fest) over the summer bank holiday, is one of our favourite watering holes. We last came here to watch the sun sink into Lyme Bay during the summer solstice.

We fall silent, drinking in the simple joys of sky, sea, and shore in all their stripey glory.

Oh, and gulls. Don’t forget the gulls – they revel in it almost as much as we do.

I think this is where I fell in love with the sea. My mum brought me and my brother here one stormy, stormy day. We were little, and it was well over two decades before the catchphrase ‘Jurassic Coast‘ was coined. We chased the waves and listened in awe to the undertow sucking the pebbles away – loud as a jet engine.

It seems quietly amazing to think we’re sat where the Chesil Beach starts, right here, on our doorstep.

To our right, it stretches out for 18 miles, past the Fleet Lagoon, Abbotsbury, Burton Bradstock, to West Bay.

The West Weares rise up to our left, terraced into the Chiswell Earthworks sculpture created by John Maine. Beach huts are studded into the hill.

Behind us hunches higgledy-piggledy Chiswell, rugged, secretive, strangely seductive. Not for the first time, we think we’d like to live here.

Lured by the chance to win a wedding with all the trimmings – flowers, photography, catering, civil ceremony – we’ve just been to scope out Portland Castle as a venue for our own upcoming nuptials. I wish we could get married here, on the beach, standing looking out to sea on the large flat pebbles, with the wind in our hair, hearing the gulls’ cries on the wind.

We bask in the sunlight and discuss ideas, in no great hurry. Like the song says, we have all the time in the world.

As we drive off Portland we see two riders and horses galloping, galloping half way up the island. It’s a wild and wonderful sight.

Aug 15 2010

Secrets and Spies

HOW thrilling that Ethel and Harry sat here in 1960 – two middle-aged civil servants in a sleepy Dorset pub, hatching their plot to sell our naval secrets to the Russians.

A framed account of the Portland Spy Ring, penned by fabled Weymouth journalist Harry Walton, hangs on the walls of the Elm Tree Inn.

This pub is no stranger to espionage or contraband. According to Anne-Marie Edwards, author of our well-thumbed guide book Pub Strolls In Dorset: “As in most villages close to the Dorset coast, the inhabitants of Langton Herring took an active part in the lucrative trade in smuggled goods from France during the 18th and early 19th centuries and a bricked-up hole in the Elm Tree Inn cellar is possibly an escape tunnel or a hiding place for their illicit brandy and tea, tobacco, laces and silks.”

Alas, the barman tells me there’s no cellar these days, let alone a hole, although village folklore tells how a secret tunnel linked the pub to St Peter’s Church round the corner.

Next to the pub, village blacksmith Robert Fielding is hammering away at an ornamental plant pot holder as his entry for the blacksmith classes at the Dorset County Show.

Just before we get to the church, we find a gingery-marmalade coloured cat sat on a first floor window sill. It eyes us very suspiciously.

The flag flies at half-mast from St Peter’s. A handwritten note informs us this is in memory of a villager who has died at the age of 83.

We trudge up a high ridge with stunning views of Dorset downs. Then we catch our first glimpse of Chesil Beach and the Fleet Lagoon.

Butterflies and dragonflies flit over stubbled wheatfields. Next to a wood, we see a deer, poised, watchful. It eyes us for perhaps a minute. Time stands still. Magic hangs in the air. I hold my breath. It turns, and delicately picks its way out of view.

Indigo orbs of sloe berries stud the hedgerows. Blackberries are still stubbornly green, thanks to the harsh winter and late spring.

In the distance sits ‘Donkey Island’, named after the Weymouth Beach donkeys wintering there. A helicopter whirrs up, up, up – could it be whisking away VIPs who’ve been living it up at Moonfleet Manor for the weekend?

Our path leads down beyond a row of coastguard cottages to a tiny beach, Langton Hive Point. The eight-mile long lagoon laps at our feet, and we meet a man from Wimborne hunting for fishermen – apparently the grey mullet are plentiful here. Delapidated rowing boats are piled up on parched eel grass – flat-bottomed, so they can skim over the shallow waters of the Fleet.

The Fleet is still and serene, and reminds me of a Scottish loch (minus the mountains). All I can hear is the warm summer breeze rustling the wheat ears. At the far end we see herons, stalking and pecking about.

We follow the banks of the Fleet for a while before taking a track up the hill to Langton Herring. As I look back, the horizon is studded with haystacks. Glorious.

Mar 28 2010

Lonely Look-out Over Puncknowle

That house on the hill

PERCHED atop the Valley of the River Bride stands a tiny coastguard’s cottage.

Visible from the coast road far below, its empty eyes still seem to watch over Lyme Bay, the swoop of Chesil Beach and the gleaming treachery of the Fleet lagoon.

Sea, view

Known as The Knoll, this ancient barrow slopes down cornfields and on towards Puncknowle, (pronounced ‘Punnel’).

Sweet valley from on high

This village is crammed with character: there are thatched cottages, an elegant manor-house and the ghost of a landlady is said to still haunt the 16th century Crown Inn.

A Millennium project has restored a footpath leading from from a windswept place called Knackers Hole to the Knoll.

It is name checked by Sir Frederick Treves in Highways and Byways In Dorset (1906): “Those who are imaginative have here a favourable spot for a story of hidden treasure.

“The story would be based upon the fact that in 1791 a farm labourer turned up with his plough a jar which contained no fewer than 1,200 coins.

“They are described as being ‘almost entirely decayed by time.’

“The money can hardly have represented the hoard of a miser, and if it had been buried in troublous times by the great family of the village [Napiers or Nappers], it is scarcely to be believed that the place of hiding was not known to some.

“There would at least have been some legend of hidden gold to be handed down from father to son.

“It is probable therefore that this was the booty of some sea rover who beached his boat at Swyre, and, going off to seek further adventure, was either murdered for the secret or was wrecked on the Chesil Beach on a less fortunate venture.”

(Thanks to Mum for photos!)

Mar 15 2010

Skylarks on Portland

SPRING has sprung on the Isle of Slingers.

Skylarks drop and bob. Seagulls skim the glassy sea. Birdwatchers wait for puffins at Pulpit Rock. Families cluster round the lighthouse, and trail off for ice-cream.

Seagulls wheel round Pulpit Rock

The island is boiled and licked clean at the edges by a clear blue sea. We find caves, gaping and silent. One has a hole in the roof, criss-crossed with railway sidings to stop people falling in. We lean and look, high over queasy waters. We feel a bit sick.

Ancient boat hoists tower over tiny, craggy inlets. We clamber down to where the limestone is sanded down, creamy smooth.

Sea views from Portland Bill

We pass rows of beach huts, more like sheds than chalets. Some of these modest little boxes are on sale for between £30,000 and £45,000, according to local estate agents.

Lovely shacks

Trotting past the discoloured teeth of disused quarries, we cross the island from east to west. A winding track leads us past the ‘lawns’, long slices of meadows carved out by the Saxons and marked by dry stone walls.

Sunshine twinkles and bounces off Lyme Bay, flanked by the yellow stripes of Chesil Beach.

Chesil Beach hugs Lyme Bay

We sit outside the Pulpit Inn. Fishing trawlers drift past coastguard cottages, snaking in safely past The Race, tumbling warily over the Shambles sandbank.

How unchanged is Portland from the place described by Thomas Hardy nearly 100 years ago… “To those who know the rocky coign of England here depicted – overlooking the great Channel Highway with all its suggestiveness, and standing out so far into mid-sea that touches of the Gulf Stream soften the air till February – it is a matter of surprise that the place has not been more frequently chosen as the retreat of artists and poets in search of inspiration – for at least a month or two in the year, the tempestuous rather than the fine seasons by preference.”

- Preface to The Well Beloved, August 1912.

Totally Dorset

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