Did that just happen?

London has given me some remarkable experiences. The Olympic Opening Ceremony springs to mind. As does one memorable morning on the Thames. And recently, London served up an episode so astonishing that it left Piran and I sitting in a pub three hours later, staring into our pints, shaking our heads, and occasionally giggling in disbelief.

As one does, Piran had put some old stone carving tools up for sale on eBay and ended up meeting a lovely guy named Tim, who turned out to know a great deal about chisels. This was because Tim is not merely a trained mason (already off-the-scale cool) but also employed as a stone mason at St. Paul's Cathedral.

I am completely delighted at the thought that: 1. There are still people who train to become stone masons and 2. Places like St. Paul's and other cathedrals have such people on staff. So when Piran revealed Tim had offered a "behind-the-scenes tour of stone masoning and bits and bobs" at St. Paul's and asked if I was interested, I think any Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Reader can guess that my answer was "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!"

I've already blogged about St. Paul's Cathedral. But this visit to St. Paul's was... well, you'll see. Tim met us outside the main steps but quickly ushered us to an underground back entrance where we signed in and got special visitor's passes. Tim then employed his impressive set of skeleton keys to whisk us through a "Staff Only" door into the crypt and straight to a previously unknown-to-me lift up to the triforium level without climbing the 141 steps involved in the public tour.

The triforium is the area above the side aisles of a church, and though I've toured St. Paul's triforium before, this was much better. For one thing, it was just me and Piran and Tim. There was no timeline, no badge-wielding tour guide on a schedule, and, best of all, no irritating other people. And Tim seemed to be in no hurry (it was his afternoon off) all the while providing an unscripted, sometimes slightly acerbic, and completely absorbing commentary on the cathedral, the stonework that's everywhere, and stone masonry in general.

We saw the shelves stacked with seemingly random bits of Old St. Paul's (before the Great Fire), which were charmingly labelled by period/architectural style - Gothic, Norman, etc. the same way Tesco might label shelves "Eggs, Flour, Sugar, etc."

And we got to see inside the library, currently closed because they're just finishing renovations. It's "a complete and untouched Wren designed interior" and houses manuscripts dating back to the 13th century.

We also got into the Trophy Room, which houses Wren's famous Great Model. Oddly, this is not actually the design that was used in the end, and there are no good records that indicate exactly why it was rejected, despite having taken ten months to design and a year of master carpentering to build. 

It's really big. Big enough that there's actually a tiny door in the side of the plinth it sits on that allows you to crawl in and poke your head up - Gulliver-like - into the inside of the model, where you can see that the interior is also finished. Tragically, Tim did not have the key to the tiny door, but we forgave him, and I suspect he has since rectified that lack in his key ring.

After the library and the Great Model, we paused briefly at the top of the Geometric staircase, and then proceeded to the north side of the triforium, past the large west gallery window. This is the spot where they stuff a gigantic Christmas Tree though a small bit of the window and set it up on the outer balcony-ish level every year. The tree itself is hoisted up from a point in the ceiling of the cathedral where we could just see a heavy hook dangling from what must have been a chain motor in the roof.

Around the corner, "this is where they keep the spare pulpits". Of course. Because you're St. Paul's Cathedral. You're not just going to have one lousy pulpit are you?

A little further along the magic keys were produced again and we popped out onto the trumpeter's gallery. Which is exactly what it says on the tin - the place where trumpeters stand to blow fanfares when the monarch arrives, or for whatever other thing might require a fanfare. (The Changing of the Pulpits, perhaps?) There we could look down at the public in the nave of the church.

Then it was on to the collections room, a dusty assemblage of old models, plaster bits, signage, and of course more random bits of stone. As Tim rightly said, "This is just genuinely full of interesting things."

I particularly like this photo, so even though I have no idea what these stones were, I'm including it.

And this may be a carving by Grinling Gibbons, the most famous English wood carver ever.  Best known for his intricate swags of greenery, "it was said a pot of carved flowers above his house in London would tremble from the motion of passing coaches". (Thanks as always, Wikipedia.)

And this has a lovely tone, don't you think? I wonder what sort of extreme measures the Dean and Chapter were considering as a punishment for foolish scribbling? Hopefully it involved dangling from the Christmas Tree hook.

This is the point when things got even cooler. (Hard to believe, I know, but brace yourself, it gets so so so much better.) Once again the keys came out and we started to make our way through a long series of narrow corridors and stairways sandwiched between the inside and outside walls of the cathedral.

There was a lot of this.

After many winding corridors and tiny doors and low hanging beams, we finally popped out on the roof. Of St. Paul's Cathedral. The freaking roof.

Thankfully, well-equipped with handrails.

Here we got to see the sort of work Tim does, because besides helping put up the Christmas Tree, one of his main things is making new stone balusters to fit into the balustrade that runs around the roof.

This photo shows how eroded the old stonework is compared to new.

The balusters are made from Portland Stone, and each one is carved by hand from a template taken from the original work. Then they're craned up to the roof and carried by hand (which takes two guys) to be fitted into place. Other than the electrically winched crane it's all impressively analog. 

And the views are not bad either, with the Walkie Talkie on the left and The Shard centre-right.

More interesting than the view in this photograph is the evidence of major erosion shown. Those wide horizontal stones sitting on top of the balusters were laid about 300 years ago, and the seams between filled with molten lead. 

Look how much stone has worn away compared to the height of the original lead seams. No wonder they need stone masons on staff.

After hanging out on the roof for a bit, we went back inside to more backstage-iness, this time directly above the nave of the Cathedral, where we could see the tops of the domes that make up the ceiling.

This is the upper side of the stone vaulting that forms the ceiling. Which we walked all over. I hasten to add that it is much more than just ONE layer thick. And those wooden pegs sticking out of the floor? Those are plugging holes in the ceiling used for dropping lifting points when needed. Tim blithely pulled one out so we could look down to the floor, one million feet below. Oh, and those wooden beams! This photo doesn't really show it, but viewed along their length you can see they're hand-hewn and twisted and look very much like the trees they were 300 years ago. So cool.

Other than the overall amazingness of the tour in general, one of the best things was being in that big stone building and learning about the stone itself. So many of London's great buildings are made of stone, but the stone itself never gets much attention. For instance, up above the nave, we looked at an unassuming corner of stonework along the wall.

Each of these stone blocks was probably cut by someone different. Tim pointed at a rough one that was likely done by an apprentice (second full course from the bottom), another that was sawn (fourth from the bottom), and another that was shaped with a stone axe (fifth). So much history and information hiding in plain site.

We also got to pop out into the famous Whispering gallery, closed to the public since 2019. They're currently getting ready to install safety fencing, and doing other renovation work on the gallery before it reopens. And of course one of the things being renovated is the stone floor.

Here you can see two new pristine white stone flags cut and shaped by Tim and showing their new, very intentional tooling marks, next to ones worn smooth, with their remaining blackened tooling marks just visible at the edge.

Our last stop might have been my favourite of the day - the mason's workshop back in the modern car-park-ish area where we entered. (I take that back. Of course my favourite was the roof, but I love a functioning workshop. Love, love, love.) 

The Mason's Workshop at St. Paul's was not big or grand. But it was well-kept and well-lit and appropriately dusty and just excellent. I mean look at this tool cabinet!

So many hammers and chisels.

These are the zinc templates they use for making bits of cathedral. Top of the pile is the baluster.

And here's a baluster under construction. 

In looking at this shape it seemed obvious to me that you'd start with a rectangular block and rough-saw the basic shape, then chisel out the detail. But of course that's not how they do it. Yes, they start with a big rectangular blank, but from there the whole thing is chiselled by hand. Every chip. By hand. Chip. Chip. Chip. Chip. Chip. The first one took Tim three weeks, though he's faster now. And he calculated that if you chisel for a whole eight hour work day with an average hammer, that's eight tons of weight wielded by your hammering arm. Apparently that can net you an impressive six pack on one side. A three-pack, shall we say?

We hung around in Tim's workshop for quite a while, and he showed us a bit of mason-ing, which looks just like you'd expect. Guy with a hammer and chisel chipping off tiny bits of stone over and over and over again. Impressive, repetitive, and really, really... old. You get the impression you could transport Tim back to the 17th century stone yard where they cut the original blocks for St. Paul's and he could pick up a hammer and chisel and fit right in with the rest of the gang, except for his modern steel-toed boots.

We tried to persuade Tim to let us buy him 100 pints at the nearest pub as thanks for the most amazing afternoon, but he had other plans. So Piran and I wandered off to slake our own parched throats and sit in disbelief. 

In the immortal words of John Denver: "Some days are diamonds, some days are stone". 

But the best days are both.

The brakes don't work backwards

I’ve visited Brighton a few times before, though haven’t done some of the more classically touristy things there. Luckily, back before the Lord Mayor’s Show and before work got busy and before the winter weather arrived, I found a weekend to visit. This was mostly because Piran moved to Brighton during lockdown, which means I’ve lost a London-based friend, but gained one on the south coast, who now also boasts a very comfortable guest suite. 

I went down on the train Friday night, and we spent Saturday tromping around the South Downs, with stops at a couple ancient hill forts and a dew pond and, most notably, lunch at the Gunn Inn in Findon. Piran rhapsodised about a lamb dish he’d had there once, so it seemed a good bet. And indeed it was. The fact that I can’t remember what I ordered as my main course detracts not at all from the story because what I do remember, indeed what still fills my dreams at night, is that we started by splitting a portion of cheesy fries which were disturbingly, astonishingly, addictively delicious. They came dressed not just with melted cheese but with chunks of fried chorizo, garlic aioli (yes I know that’s a tautology) and a drizzle of spicy oil. (Probably the fat from the chorizo. With a liberal dusting of crack.) They were so good that we did not even pause to photograph the dish when it arrived but did manage to finish our mains and a pint or two and were even persuaded to order dessert.

Dessert was this. Prompting the above expression for me, which clearly translates as “Are you kidding me?”

So that was Saturday in Brighton. Rambling, cheesy fries, and dinner with some of Piran’s Brighton gang at another pub. Good day, but just a warm-up for Sunday which started with a leisurely breakfast but had two very Brighton-y gems in store. First on the agenda was the 125th London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, the world’s longest-running motoring event and a perfectly quirky, perfectly photogenic, perfectly bloggy thing.

Established 1896, the first event was dubbed The Emancipation Run”, to celebrate the enacting of the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896. This legislation marked the end to some of the more restrictive limits to the use of horseless carriages on English roadways, including a speed limit of 4mph in the country and 2mph in towns. It’s commonly believed the 1896 legislation also repealed the infamous Red Flag Act, which “stipulated that self-propelled vehicles should be accompanied by a crew of three; if the vehicle was attached to two or more vehicles an additional person was to accompany the vehicles; a man with a red flag was to walk at least 60 yd (55 m) ahead of each vehicle, who was also required to assist with the passage of horses and carriages.” The Red Flag act had, in fact, already been repealed in 1878, but it’s an enduring myth of the Veteran Car Run commemorated by the ceremonial tearing in half of a red flag at the start of each year’s run.

Back in 1896, with a exhilarating new speed limit of 14mph, a group of 33 vehicles left from the Metropole Hotel in London (after a commemorative breakfast, of course). 17 of the 33 managed the entire 54 miles to Brighton, with the first finishing in 3 hours and 44 minutes, just squeaking in under the limit at an average speed of 13.9 mph. This rather dismal percentage of finishers is an enduring feature of the race, with vehicles regularly conking out, sometimes being revived by specially-trained mechanics from the Royal Automobile Club, and occasionally having to be pushed across the finish line hours after the leaders arrive. However one shouldn’t be too dismissive, as the central requirement to participate in the Veteran Car Run is that the vehicle entered must have been manufactured before 1905. The oldest car to participate this year was made in 1894.

Harry Lawson, organiser of the 1896 Emancipation Run, and his wife, at the start of the inaugural event

So on a dazzlingly clear and unseasonably warm morning, Piran and I headed to the sea front to witness the arrival of the first cars, expected around 10:30am. The traditional route starts at Hyde Park and runs past Buckingham Palace, through Brixton and Croydon and down the A23, finishing on the Brighton sea front at Madeira Drive. However, at 10:30 there was nary a car to be seen. Nor at 11am or 11:30 or even 12. So we filled the time with a stroll down Brighton Pier and along the sea front and through Brighton’s famous Lanes. And since I’ve talked about sea fronts and piers before, let’s just skip over that and get to the part where the cars finally stared arriving.

Here’s the final stretch, viewed from above, where each car stopped and the driver was interviewed about their journey, their vehicle, and, especially notable, the general excellence of the weather that day, all of which was broadcast over speakers to the assembled throng.

We made our way down to street level and found a spot near the pedestrian barriers to watch the cars trundle past close up.

Like this one.

Finally we fetched up at the paddock where the cars were parked and where the drivers took a well-deserved break for refreshments in a nearby tent. Each car is also required to carry at least one passenger, and many people were wearing period dress, which definitely adds to the festive atmosphere. (Though I can imagine that in years when the weather does not cooperate one might fervently wish they had chosen Gore-Tex over tweed.) Some participants also carried picnics in special wicker baskets that were clearly part of the car’s design. Those were the days! Screw the satnav and the anti-lock brakes. Give me brass lanterns for headlights and a dedicated storage area for my stilton and champagne!

This fetching green-and-yellow beauty lurched into its spot with the aid of the his-vis-clad Royal Automobile Club Official, who helped stop it in place after the driver uttered the phrase of the day: “The brakes don’t work backwards!”

This paint job was particularly festive, though all the cars we saw were clearly well-loved and well-kept. Many have been in the same family for generations, and at least one was bought new by the current driver’s great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather or some such. Possibly in France. (Perhaps I should have been taking notes.)

The parking area was an ever-changing feast of antique motoring, because cars were constantly arriving, parking up, then leaving and being replaced by new arrivals. There were more than 300 cars entered, along with a smattering of vintage bicycles (including four penny-farthings) and one 1903 Minerva single cylinder motorcycle. After a suitable rest period, some cars were then loaded onto car-carriers to return from whence they came. However, other drivers proudly declared they’d driven their cars from home to the start line in London, then to Brighton, and would then drive straight back home to their garage in Little Snerglington-by-Snort or wherever it was they came from. 

Eventually we tired of the never-ending rows of polished brass and glossy black and wandered to the city centre to try and catch a few of the cars in traffic. This was, for me, the most surprising part of the whole event. For some reason I’d assumed that the Veteran Car Run had some sort of priority lane from London to Brighton to keep these precious vehicles and their startlingly-poorly-protected passengers out of the regular flow of 21st century traffic. Not so. 

All those cars were mixed in with everyone else on the road for the whole 54 miles! And some of them are so small. I mean look at those poor guys… that thing is basically a one hundred and twenty year old go-cart with a numberplate. Thankfully, participants in the Veteran Car Run and not allowed to exceed an average speed of 20mph.

By this time we'd had our fill of cars, however photogenic, and no one was offering US any stilton and champagne, so we wandered off. Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Readers will no doubt remember that I promised two very Brighton-y gems in the opening paragraphs of this post. However, it took me six weeks to get this written and posted, so I've decided to take my time and keep that in my back pocket for a future edition. In the mean time, I've opened a theatre show in London and done some work on another upcoming project, and continued battling with the boat engine, and put up the Christmas decorations and safely topped up my mince pie levels for another year. This post is shorter than some, but I'm taking the "done is better than perfect" view on this one. So, by the power vested in me as Supreme Leader of the Go Stay Work Play Live Global Consortium, I hereby declare this blog post DONE.

Dorset Coast, Day Two (or: Ready, Aim, Fire!)

Before we were so rudely interrupted by a global pandemic, your humble blogger was fed and showered and inhabiting an upper bunk at the Lulworth Cove Youth Hostel enjoying the righteous slumber of one who has hiked 20km in a wind tunnel and then downed half a bottle of very credible red wine. At least Sunday’s hike promised to be much shorter, though I was alarmed when the morning briefing included the warning that the day's route would be "quite exposed". ("What, compared to the cozy and sheltered outing yesterday?” I thought, and braced myself.) The weather forecast also wasn’t promising, with rain expected.

Nonetheless we dutifully packed our bags, tidied the hostel, and laced up muddy boots for a ramble to Old Harry Rocks, another of those wacky rock formations you find along the chalky south coast. First, though, we drove to the start of the hike in Swanage. One of the attractions of the group's itinerary that weekend was the chance of a ride on the steam train run by the Swanage Heritage Railway, though it was unclear during the previous evening’s planning whether the train was running that day.

Empirical evidence later proved that the train was indeed in operation.

But the train rides would have to wait, for there was hiking to be done. Astute Go Stay Work Play Live Readers will have noted the clear blue sky the the photo above but rest assured it did not last. Not long after striking out to the east along the beach in Swanage the skies clouded over and we all paused to put on our waterproofs just as the rain arrived. It wasn’t torrential by any means, but it was enough to dampen my spirits. It also didn’t help that not much later we passed though a small cluster of urbanity and saw a sandwich board out on the road advertising the local pub. It promised real ale and hot food and I knew that if I hadn’t been with the group I would have peeled off without the slightest hesitation to wait things out.

And yet I didn’t. I’m still not sure why. This photo doesn’t really show the rain but it was there.

Luckily, the skies did clear and we made it to Old Harry Rocks in the sunshine. The rocks themselves are the remains of a chalk causeway that once linked the Isle of Wight to the mainland. The causeway eroded over time and left towering stacks of rock, one of which includes another natural archway (like Durdle Door) that will eventually turn into two stacks.

You can also just see the beginning of cave on the mainland in the bottom left of this photo. Eventually that will become and arch and then the opening under the arch will get taller and taller until that bit of the headland is cut off. And in case you think we’re talking about a geological time scale for this stuff, think again. Our guide Lee said that new cave wasn’t there when he did this hike a few months ago, which seems positively supersonic.

Naturally there were other people at the site taking in the view - you could just make out the Isle of Wight in the distance. But there were also signs warning people to stay away from the edge of the cliff, as there are along all those high chalk cliffs that edge the south coast. Equally naturally, there were also people blithely ignoring the signs, including one notable idiot who climbed down a particularly precarious path to a lower section of the headland. And just to make it that extra bit stupider, he did it with carrier bags tied over his shoes, so he had the least amount of grip possible. It was evolution in action, and we were all expecting to have to hang around and give statements to the air rescue pilots, so we quickly pressed on for the last leg of the walk back to Swanage.

By this time you can see that the skies had cleared a bit though it was still windy. However there were sheltered areas, and they were a welcome relief, until we encountered the last of the day’s obstacles.

I’m not saying it was Passchendale out there, but for someone a bit fed up with the general environment and wearing shoes that had recently been discovered to have small holes in the waterproof lining, this was a LOT of mud. And this is just one of the long stretches of gumbo we traversed.

It’s time to retire these shoes.

The rain started up again once we reached Swanage and I was profoundly grateful that the promised group tea at the end of the walk had to be abandoned because the tea shop at the Steam Railway was closed. It was an easy excuse to quit the group, and Piran and I hurried back to the car to seek dry shoes and socks and to make our own plans for the rest of the day, which is when things got much, much better.

Because we went to Corfe Castle!

Corfe Castle is a magnificent ruin set on a hill above the town that bears its name, located smack in the middle of the oddly named Isle of Purbeck, which is patently a peninsula and not an island at all. One would think that a nation that produces maps so superlative that they differentiate between lighthouses, disused lighthouses and beacons and have different symbols for gravel pits as opposed to sand pits could have got this one right, but apparently not. Corfe Castle was built by William the Conqueror in the 11th century, and was one of the first castles in England to use stone as opposed to wood and earth. It was also one of the last Royalist strongholds during the English Civil War, before it fell to siege in 1645. After being captured, the castle was slighted on the orders of Parliament. And lest you think that slighting, in this context, means that it was not invited to the annual summer garden party, think again. This sort of slighting is a trifle more forceful than that and is a term used for deliberate damage to important buildings - especially castles - to reduce both their practical and symbolic value. In the case of Corfe Castle, they went so far as to use explosives, which is why many of the castles interior walls sit at a jaunty angle today.

Check out that jauntiness!

That weekend the castle staff were demonstrating several different medieval crafts, including a station where one woman was busily engaged in mixing up a bucket of daub near a small outbuilding that had been constructed inside the castle walls using traditional techniques. A precursor to lathe-and-plaster construction, wattle-and-daub walls are made from a lattice of thin woven sticks (the wattle) set in a structural frame and covered in a sticky mix called daub. It’s often whitewashed over, resulting in the familiar half-timbered look we usually associate with Tudor building and endless suburbs.

Small amounts of daub are usually mixed by hand, though larger batches were often mixed by animals stomping around on it. This woman’s recipe included clay, aggregate, horse manure and slaked lime. She was preparing it to repair the wall behind her.

And if you think hand-mixing animal dung into plaster is painstaking, consider the other traditional craft that was being demonstrated - the process of shaving animal horn into tiny translucent panes to be installed in a window frame, thus allowing a thin bit of yellowy light into an otherwise dark room.

This young woman, in her festive wooly cap, was using a sort of chisel to shave down the surface of a 1” x 2” bit of cow horn that had been boiled in the pot behind her. I know times were tough back then, but this seems slightly ridiculous. I know actual glass must have been rare and expensive, but who would possibly look at a bit of old cow horn and think, “You know, this stuff is ever so slightly translucent. I bet if I spent hours and hours of smelly, painstaking labour I could produce a minuscule piece of something slightly MORE translucent!"

Just visiting the castle and seeing the activities on display, especially on what turned into a lovely sunny day, would have been enough to lift my bedraggled spirits after the morning’s muddy tromp. But Corfe Castle ended up having much much more to offer because we’d arrived just in time to see the demonstration of the castle’s working trebuchet!

This is a small scale version of the traditional siege engine. However, its size is modelled on an authentic “traveling trebuchet” that was actually built at the time. Trebuchets use a counterweighted arm to throw a projectile from a sling. Modern reproductions of the largest medieval ones stand up to 60’ high and can throw an 80 lb. projectile almost a thousand feet.

The Corfe Castle trebuchet uses 3/4 ton of counterweight, and is winched into position by volunteers from the crowd, which on that day included Piran and I. And perhaps because I might have hopped up and down chanting “pick me pick me”, we were the ones chosen to assist in the firing. Yay for unbridled enthusiasm! (Screw you disappointed children - only adults allowed for this activity!) Having spent last summer winding lock gates open and shut, Piran and I were both eminently qualified for winching activities.

Once the arm was in place the National Trust volunteer running the show carefully positioned the projectile - a plastic children’s ball filled with water weighing about 12kg - in the sling. And then, in an act of supreme generosity, Piran let me step forward when one of us was given the chance to actually FIRE the loaded trebuchet. (A thousand thank yous for that!) (Also, Piran is mounting a campaign to have his own tag on the blog. Perhaps that would be just reward for such a magnanimous gesture...). And that's how this happened:

When I posted this video I titled it “Ready, Aim, Fire!”, but in my head it’s always been called: “Does this trebuchet make my ass look big?” (Answer: Yes. Yes it does.)

The trebuchet was undoubtedly the highlight of my day (week, month, life…) but later I did also enjoy a very nice warm Cornish pasty and fortifying cup of hot tea from the award winning bakery in town. And we got to meet a lovely long-haired basset hound nearby, who had a charming name I neglected to write down. Let’s say he was called Chester. I also neglected to take a picture of Chester, but he was fantastic. (And: long-haired basset hound! Who knew?)

On the way back to London we took one last detour to experience the Sandbanks Ferry, a chain ferry that crosses the entrance to Poole Harbour between Sandbanks and Shell Bay. A chain ferry, of course, is a ferry that is guided back and forth by pulling itself along a chain that’s stretched between the two banks.

Chain and ferry, with Sandbanks in the background.

Once we got to Sandbanks we took a brief spin around what, unexpectedly, turns out to be the most expensive coastal property in the world. Hard to believe, but buying a house on Sandbanks’ Panorama Road will set you back more than if you have your sights set on Monte Carlo or Miami Beach. Apparently it’s popular with footballers, though John Lennon also owned a house there. Whatever the reason, we didn’t linger and soon hit the highway back to London and real life. Despite the wind and rain and mud and group-i-ness of it all, looking back from just six weeks later it seems positively idyllic. Bunking up with total strangers crammed into a crowded hostel. Visiting public attractions. Popping in and out of shops with reckless abandon. Ah, the good old days!

The Dorset Coast, Day One:

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There was a time when I did quite a few touristy group activities. My days back at Go See Run Eat Drink were a whirlwind of package tours and guided walks. And more recently I’ve enjoyed several AirBNB Experiences. But group activities come at a cost. There’s the financial cost of course, but there’s also a psychological one. Being part of a group means you are relieved of much of the bother of organising an activity but it also means you are relieved of the ability to make your own decisions about that activity. Still, sometimes it’s nice to just go along with the group, and it’s never a bad idea to have options when more individualised plans are tricky or impossible. At least that’s what Piran and I figured when contemplating The Outdooraholics two day walking trip on the Dorset Coast. Mostly it was that they were planning to get to an out-of-the-way but promising village that’s been on my list, and partly it was about trying something new. And I suppose there was also a generous measure of “why not?”

Whatever the ratio of rationales, that’s how I ended up in a rental car on a Friday afternoon with Piran at the wheel, en route to a youth hostel in the coastal village of West Lulworth. I assumed my youth hosteling days were long over, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my decade long transition from 20-bunk dorm to 5-star hotel. But it was only going to be two nights. And then we were offered guest rooms at the lovely home of a couple of Piran’s friends who lived very nearby, so then it was only one night, and that seemed very doable.

Yeah yeah, blah blah blah. What’s the number for room service?

The trip sounded good on paper - Jurassic Coast, special village, wacky rock formations, chalk cliffs - what more could you want? Of course walking in the UK in March is a crapshoot because there’s always the chance of miserable weather (though actually that’s a risk at any time of year) but then again what’s the point of a countryside ramble if you don’t end up scaling a rocky peak in the teeth of a force nine gale so you can squat on your haunches at the top eating a soggy sandwich?

We passed a very pleasant Friday evening with our hosts in the local pub and then repaired to our private beds in our private rooms Friday night. We arrived at the hostel on Saturday morning just in time for a quick second breakfast, a rapid round of sandwich making, and the group briefing.

The common room / dining room / briefing room of the hostel. Overwhelmingly adequate in every respect.

With the briefing complete, including the warning that there were three large hills in our future, we struck off from the hostel in a group of about 30 towards Durdle Door, which is not magical portal from Harry Potter but one of those wacky rock formations I mentioned. It was a sort of warm-up walk before the main part of the hike, and the pace and terrain were gentle.

Me posing at Durdle Door, which is that arched rock formation in the background. 
It’s famous, I promise.

After Durdle Door there was a quick toilet stop near Lulworth Cove (also famous, because it’s very round) and then we started out on the main part of the hike. The hike leader Milena - a slightly scary Bulgarian Woman - issued stern instructions that we needed to pick up the pace because we were falling behind schedule. “Now, we must hike!” And here I refer you back to my previous remarks about being relieved of the ability to make decisions about schedule. So hike we did, starting almost right away with a hill that the other hike leader - Lee - called "The Beast". Fun times.

A downward slope on the other side of The Beast.

We also walked a little ways around Lulworth Cove before the ascent, and the beach was pleasingly replete with roundy rocks in three colours - white, black and rusty red.

The main reason I wanted to do this particular walk was because it promised to include a visit to the abandoned village of Tyneham. Tyneham was inhabited by 225 people when, in 1943, the government ordered all the residents to leave so that it could expand the nearby tank firing range in preparation for D-Day. With just a month’s notice, all the villagers were required pack up and vacate, though they were promised they could return when the war was won. Poignantly, one resident left a note pinned to the door of the village church.

 “Please treat the church and houses with care. We have given up our homes where many of us have lived for generations, to help win the war to keep men free. We will return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.”

Despite the government’s promise, the looming Cold War led the government to acquire the village by compulsory purchase and it remains part of the military range that dominates the area. The village's families were never allowed to return.

The range is still in use and access is understandably restricted when they’re lobbing live shells around. Happily, that’s one of the things that people who organise group excursions tend to verify in advance.


One hopes this particular tank is a target and not on active duty.

Even though we'd made it as far as the firing range, it would still be a long way and a few more big hills before we reached the village. And because the walk was along the south coast, it was a trifle exposed and the wind coming off the water was occasionally irksome, there being nothing between us and France to break its stride. Normally when I go out rambling I like to make sure there’s a convivial pub on the way which one could expect to stumble into around lunchtime for a fortifying pint and a hot meal. Indeed my favoured source for walking routes (the Saturday Walkers Club), that I have mentioned before, make a point of routing past pubs at approximately the midway point of a walk. Sadly that’s not how the Outdooraholics roll, which, again, is one of the perils of a group experience.

Instead we huddled against a small hill trying to shelter from the wind and sharing out Tesco flapjacks. I’ve been trying to find a lovely half-remembered quote from Bill Bryson about the English and their love of blustery tea breaks on the side of a hill, so I might just have to nip off quickly to re-read “Notes from a Small Island” and get back to you. Until then you should all go read this because it’s fantastic.

And to demonstrate he’s generally more prepared and hardier than I am, Piran braved the unsheltered side for a bit of lunchtime recreation, also ably demonstrating the wind speed.

Finally, after a few more hills and few of our number dropping out due to exhaustion or chilblains or altitude sickness or something like that, we at last made it to Tyneham Village. Other than the remains of the stone buildings that are the heart of the village, there was a barn that’s been fixed up, a long section of fresh drystone wall, and several larger buildings further afield. It was a place I could have spent a very happy hour or more. For the Outdooraholics it was a place for a quick toilet stop and what felt like a five minute pause. And that’s when the whole group activity thing really fell apart for me and I had a bit of a melt-down. Having emerged from the church building to see the rest of the group disappearing up the road while I was just getting started, I was at a bit of a loss and determined not to shortchange myself so dramatically. One of the hike leaders, Lee, even came all the way back to chivvy us along, but luckily Piran was able to convince him that we’d be able to make our own way back to the hostel without guidance, well-equipped as we were with Ordnance Survey maps and common sense. Mollified, Lee trotted off to catch up with the group and we were free to explore.

This lovely little building was a seed store, propped up on specially shaped mushroom-like legs to prevent rodents from getting at the seeds.

And this gent was literally building a dry stone wall! The Tyneham site is used as a testing ground for the Dry Stone Walling Association. I’d have loved to have had the time and gumption to talk with this guy. (Also, I love the mere existence of the Dry Stone Walling Association.)

The heart of the village was Post Office Row - a string of attached stone and brick buildings that, unsurprisingly, once included the Post Office. (Also, I really should have issued a formal Comic Sans Warning ahead of that last link, because the website it leads to has made a very odd typographical choice, especially given the subject matter.)

The public used to be able to wander around in houses of Post Office Row, but they’ve now been deemed too dangerous.

It is still possible to go into the church, which is filled with displays and remembrances from people who lived in the village. I didn’t have a lot of time there, but I recall they ran heavily to tales of the congregation's joy upon the installation of a heating stove in the church and heart-warming stories of small boys earning tuppence to pump the pedals on the pipe organ.

The schoolhouse is probably the most interesting and well-presented building in the village, set up as it may have been before the residents left.

Young Fredrick Knight (third hook from the right) was apparently an ancestor of an employee of half of the couple who lived in the house where we spent our very agreeable Friday night.

Even though we knew the way back and had successfully extricated ourselves from the group, I still felt like we should be hurrying on to try to catch up, though there was no practical reason for this urge. Nonetheless, we headed off up the road about half an hour behind the crowd to revisit some of the favourite ascents from the walk there. I’d been expecting that the path back would follow a different, more inland route, because it didn’t make sense to retrace our steps when there might be new things to see, fewer dispiriting hills, and less Gallic blusteriness to endure. Sadly, the area covered by the military firing range is extensive enough that we’d have had to detour for many miles for that, so it was back to the high chalk cliffs and what seemed like and endless slog in a very steady gale. Cleverly, a few others of the group actually managed to blag a ride from Tyneham back to the hostel from a complete stranger in the visitor’s car park. Well played, ladies. I'd take my hat off to you if it hadn't been blown to Poole and beyond.

I think the slope of my shoulders and the colour of the sky in this photo are two good indications of my mood by this point.

We did eventually catch up with the straggling end of the group a few minutes before we reached the hostel. The day's walk had been about 20km, and the wind had been that unrelenting energy-sapping type that meant by the time we reached the hostel I was simultaneously chilled and sweaty and also quite muddy and comprehensively knackered. Naturally, the hot water system in the hostel was incapable of coping with the arrival of 30 people all in need of a shower so I think I just laid on my upper bunk in a bit of a daze for a while. The tour did include cream tea with (shop-bought) scones though, and it was nice to tuck into those and have a hot cuppa later. And eventually there was an easy amble to a pub in Lulworth Village for a swift half, and then there was finally enough hot water for a shower and then there was supper and an evening pouring over the OS map making plans for the next day. Sunday had a few high highs and few low lows, but your coffee is probably either cold or gone by now, and I’m over my self-imposed 2,000 word limit, so let’s save those tales for another blog.

Many muddy boots on Saturday evening