Thursday, June 9
Lyme Regis to Seatown / Chideock, 8.8 Miles
After the heat–and sweat–of the day before, I popped into an outdoor outfitter, Mountain Warehouse, to buy a bandana…of course they had no idea what I was talking about. But I did get a nifty little absorbent towel that packs into a 2 inch-square pouch and attaches to my daypack with a carabiner. Yes!
The hikers who worked at the store also suggested that we avoid the day’s first cliff by walking along the beach, since high tide would come later in the day. The first sections of the path had been diverted because of landslips–whole sections of the cliff at Bar Ledges having collapsed onto the beach–and involved a lot of uninteresting road walking.
We met Cindy and Gary on the seafront and walked along to the end of the esplanade, where we found a charming statue.
These are two modern-day paleontologists flanking the great early paleontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847). Anning grew up in an impoverished and uneducated family, but she evinced a remarkable interest in fossils from an early age. The eroding and collapsing cliffs around Lyme Regis made this a fertile ground for new discoveries, and she discovered the first intact ichthyosaurus (17 feet long!) when she was just twelve. She went on to make a series of spectacular discoveries, including a plesiosaurus (1823) and the first intact pterodactyl outside Germany (1828). She supported herself and her family by selling these and other fossil discoveries, often to scientists who then took credit for the discoveries. As a woman, she received scant recognition in her lifetime, but now ranks as one of the great British scientists.
Not surprisingly, the beaches around Lyme Regis are full of fossil hunters; many of them work directly under the cliffs–at great peril, because their are frequent casualties. We treated the beaches with all due respect, and stayed well clear of the cliffs.
While watching the fossil hunters, I discovered I had left my sticks back where we had met Gary and Cindy that morning. My loving wife had pity on my knees and went back to fetch them–on the Sue double quick. Here she comes!
We had a very pleasant walk along the beach to the little village of Charmouth. There had been a significant landslip east of Charmouth, necessitating yet another diversion of the path, but the trail had recently been rerouted along the cliffs, and we were able to make the ascent over the Dover Ledges without any trouble. Views opened up quickly back to Charmouth and Lyme Regis. Although, as you can see, we had a day of low clouds. That did little to detract from the really glorious scenery here.
From the Dover Ledges, we got our first look at the Golden Cap in the distance.
From this perspective the path appears to be flat right up to the slopes of the great cliff. And indeed there were long stretches of walking through lovely fields with sweeping views of the sea on our right.
But most of the path rose and fell over cliffs and into combes; nothing murderous, but nothing easy either.
Here we are rolling down into a comb with the Cap looming in the background.
The farmlands here are some of the prettiest we’ve encountered; a number of the farms are preserved by the National Trust. In the foreground here you see the ruins of Saint Gabriel’s church from the 14th century.
Once past the lesser cliffs, the trail begins to rear up to climb the cap.
The final ascent is long and steep; we climbed up some of the very few switchbacks of the whole walk.
Despite the haze, we had some fine views eastward from the top.
The initial descent, like the final ascent, was quite steep. But the path then led us on a very long and pretty gradual descent toward Seatown, a hamlet so small it barely deserves a name!
Seatown did have one of the best pubs of the whole trip; the Anchor Inn was an old smuggler’s house.
As you can see, it opened as a pub in 1861.
The Anchor Inn marked a temporary parting of the ways. Our lodging was in a B&B a half mile inland; Gary had been unable to find anything nearby, and our friends soon geared up for another three mile trek to their inn in West Bay.
Chideock, the village in which our B&B, Rose Cottage, lies, should be a lovely place: warm stone cottages, thatched roofs, the whole deal. But the coast road is routed through the middle of the village. If lorries roaring by in front of your home, I guess it is a swell place to live. The B&B was run by a terrific couple; Mick had been a helicopter mechanic in the Royal Navy (helicopters was becoming a theme of the walk). Their home was beautifully furnished, our room extremely comfortable, and they gave us a huge and delicious breakfast. One of the nicest stays of the trip. Unfortunately, the local pub didn’t rise to that standard: unprofessional service and the old kind of pub grub. Alas.