First stop Plymouth to visit Helen and Dave. Theres something really functional about port towns, enhanced I’m sure by their living in a 1900s terraced house. A house with character, a town with character. Not clean like Cambridge, more lived in than that. The bracing wind from the South west probably helped add to the ambiance of the place, though. We took a stroll along the clifftops by the harbour, looking out to sea it is an obvious location for a port.
Monday we headed on, or back perhaps, to our destination, but before arriving we had to collect our companions from a DIY shop where they were obtaining parts for the weeks project. Wolveton Gatehouse is at the end of a somewhat uneven drive across ancient parkland just outside Dorchester. It took us a little while to convince ourselves that we were in the right place.
Its quite rugged as places to stay go, you can see how it got the ‘For hardier visitors’ tag. It is a 16th century main block built between two 14th century towers (though my memory for dates isn’t something to be relied upon), the construction is very much from the Castle School of Design, with huge rooms, huge doors, huge fireplaces. It was somewhat unnerving sleeping in a room bigger than my house, and somewhat cold. The 2kW fan heater was just about enough to keep one corner of the room warm enough to sleep in. The living room, upstairs above the archway, was quite cosy once the wood fire got going.
Our first quest after unpacking and finding provisions for the week was to locate the local fundamental benchmark – a remarkably easy find compared with my previous experiences of such things. Next up were the martyrs, who we found standing around on Gallows Hill.
Wednesday we drove to Portland Bill, a desolate place. Maybe its nicer at other times of the year but we could only manage 20 minutes of being outside before retiring to a local hotel for coffee and lunch. The scenary on the Bill is fabulous, its heritage being stone quarrying, plenty of small rocky roads winding through the outcrops and holes. The architecture is somewhat unusual as well, due I suspect to the abundance of good quality stone in the area.
Atop the hill on the north of the Bill is an old WWI (or was it WWII?) gun battery, it must be one of the bleakest locations within sight of civilisation. It has now been turned into a prison, which it seems can only be entered over a concrete walkway, not a nice place to be held (as if any prison could be considered nice). We drove back the long way around to go see the monument to the wrong Thomas Hardy, and some other fabulous costal scenary.
To be continued…
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