We’d booked to go inside Corfe Castle today. When I say “inside” I mean inside the grounds as there really is very little left to go inside of the castle itself. Given the angle of some of the walls they really seem to be defying gravity and it’s amazing that they haven’t tumbled down the hill. Turns out that the best views of Corfe are from outside the grounds and so we weren’t in there long.
I’d found a walk that looked interesting on the web and we drove to Renscombe where there was a car park and the start of the walk. Given that it is the end of September the weather was just perfect for a walk along the coast path and looking down the water below was some fantastic shades of blue, although I expect it might have been chilly had we elected to take a dip. The instructions said that the walk was flat with the exception of one steep section and they weren’t kidding. This was a steep decent down the side of the valley and then back up the other side. This was stepped but the tread was a bit of a stretch even for my legs so we arrived at the top of the other side out of breath. An hour or so later we arrived back at the start where our car awaited us and we felt very satisfied with the mornings work.
We felt that we had earned a reward for completing the walk and so drove on up the coast to Studland where we got ourselves a drink and went to the beach to finish the last of the scones that we had brought with us from Reading. We sat on the sand looking out at the huge cruse ships on the horizon. The last place people will want to be at the moment is in close proximity of others on a cruise ship I suspect so I assume they are moored offshore waiting for better times.
The final place we wanted to visit was Old Harry Rocks but when we arrived at the nearest car park it wasn’t immediately obvious how to get there so we wandered down onto South Beach instead. It was only on return back to the road that we saw a sign to the rocks. It had been a long day and the thought of another three mile walk wasn’t terribly appealing but we decided to man (and woman) up and walk out there and I’m really glad that we did as it was another great view.
The weather for the rest of the week does not look promising and so I am glad that we made the most of the sunshine today and packed so much in. We even tried to do one more thing on the way back to the hotel. Many, many, years ago and I am talking about 45 years ago at least, I used to holiday in this area with my parents at a campsite at Harmans Cross. We decided that it would be good to drive back via there to see if we could get a picture. It may have been a long time ago but there is as little there now as I remember there being all those years ago and there was certainly nowhere to stop for a nostalgic picture.
Tomorrow it looks like we’re going to have to don our Sou’westers.
