Tag Archives: Portland

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.

Aug 14 2011

Who says sailing’s not a spectator sport?

SAILS snap and crash as the dinghies bounce off waves.

We’re with a few hundred other people watching the Weymouth and Portland international regatta 2011 – the test event for the Olympics.

Sat on the slopes of the Nothe peninsula – the official arena for spectators of next year’s Olympic and Paralympic sailing races – there are flags, and cheers, and binoculars, and picnics, and all sorts of nationalities.

In the British camp we spy Wyke Regis’ very own world champion windsurfer Nick Dempsey, Olympic bronze (Beijing) windsurfer Bryony Shaw, 470 sailor Saskia Clark, and world Number Two Laser sailor Paul Goodison It’s fair to say that all the sailing boys and girls are a very fit bunch indeed – tanned nutmeg brown from all those days spent skimming over the water, honed from all that yanking of sheets and sails, white of tooth and bouncy of hair.

There’s a great sense of excitement as changeable winds bring the medal races closer to dry land. Team GBR came 4th in the 49ers.

The Stars class is won by the Brits, who came second overall (we think). Sailing is pretty confusing to follow, as the person who crosses the finishing line first does not necessarily win gold – it depends on their overall placing over a number of races.

Luckily, there’s lots of well-informed spectators giving a running commentary, so we eavesdrop, unashamedly. There’s lots of fevered mutterings and straining of necks as the sailors round the marker buoys. Who knows – the Olympic teams might even be announced this afternoon.

Ahead of the Finn race, Ben Ainslie tacks to the foot of the Nothe to say hello to his supporters. He’s a triple gold and silver Olympic medallist. This is nothing less than sailing royalty up close. What I wouldn’t give for a long lens right now.

The race starts, and it’s incredible to watch such sportsmanship in action at such close quarters. Ben’s in 4th place, heading towards Lulworth. The wind is light, so, to pick up speed, he physically yanks the sheet backwards and forwards by throwing his whole body to and fro. His force is so strong that the boat rocks up and down, up and down, and magically he glides into first place in the space of 200 metres. No-one can catch him. No-one can match him. Now I see why these sailors are called athletes – their sheer strength is astonishing.

How amazing that watching this event is free, in a public place. Despite the furore surrounding Locog’s commandeering of the Nothe Gardens and charging people up to £50 to watch the Olympic Sailing races next summer, we are quietly chuffed that we managed to get tickets to the medal day of the Finn classes. Will we be there to watch Ben Ainslie win another gold for Great Britain?

This is only the second time in my life I have felt proud to be British. (The first time was last April, watching William and Kate get married). Wow. Go GBR!

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.

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.