Dorset Days

We forsook the abundant charms of Cape Breton in September to cross the Atlantic for a six-day walking trip through Dorset County in the south of England. Dorset was ‘Wessex’ in the 19^th century novels of Thomas Hardy. I hadn’t attended to Hardy’s novels in decades but for a taste of Dorset atmosphere I read Hardy’s last novel, Jude the Obscure. Jude is said to be Hardy’s darkest novel. If ‘darkest’ means inclining the reader to thoughts of suicide, I concur in the adjective. For all the dreadful events Hardy arranges to fall on the head of poor Jude Frawley, the book had me tearing my hair out. Be that as it may, the quality of the writing is up to Hardy’s exalted standard and the novel certainly evokes a sense of place, one that enhanced the walk.

We tramped more than 120 km in our six walking days, one of those days close to 30 km. A year ago we hiked the Garrotxa region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. Arrangements were made for us by a British company, On Foot, who booked our accommodation, transported our bags from place to place, and most important, availed an off-the-beaten-track route for us and supplied detailed navigational instructions. We were sufficiently pleased with On Foot’s 2013 efforts that we got them to undertake the same role for us this time.

Starting out at Salisbury we admired the city’s magnificent cathedral; its spire dates back to the 1300s and at 404’ is the tallest pre-1400 spire in the whole wide world. If 14^th century attractions seem a little too nouveau there is, not far from Salisbury, a man-made structure that is even older—vastly older. We went to Stonehenge and joined the crowds gawking at the huge human-arranged rocks, the origins and purposes of which have yet to be comprehensively illuminated by experts.

Dorset’s is a lyric rather than epic sort of beauty. The region perhaps doesn’t lend itself to the same sort of superlatives we applied a year ago in Catalonia: ‘pastoral’ and ‘bucolic’ are more suitable modifiers than ‘spectacular’ and ‘glorious’, but we found plenty enough to distract ourselves as we wandered Dorset’s well-tended landscapes. Much of the time On Foot led us across farm fields through ‘kissing gates’ and over stiles; into woods past copses and coppices. There were daily encounters with tranquil sheep and cows, and fortunately none with enraged bulls or rams.

We paid attention to birds wherever we went: birds we never see in either of the neighbourhoods we seasonally call home on Canada’s east and west coasts. Birds with enticing names: yellowhammer, stonechat, wagtail, wheatear. And of course tits—plenty of tits—willow tits, coal tits, blue tits, long-tailed tits, even great tits.

We came upon evidence that mankind has occupied this part of the world for a very long time—the occasional tumulus or barrow—ancient burial mounds for those not in the know—and, at Hambledon Hill, the site of a neolithic fortress going back forty-eight centuries.

Readers who know us well need not be reminded that neither of us is a religious person—not in the least—but we nonetheless found ourselves paying close attention to churches, some standing since the 13^th century. For us the lure of churches relates not to heaven but to architecture, history and art.  Attractions like the carved ‘kneeling oxen’ at Rampisham that Hardy may have worked on, the remarkable stained glass at Milton Abbey, the 15^th century tempura-on-wood paintings of Christ’s apostles at Hilton.

Serendipitous discoveries are among the best rewards of travel. A year ago I’d never heard of Antoni Gaudi or modernista architecture. It took only minutes in Barcelona for that to change. This time we discovered architect Augustus Pugin (1812-52); in his very short life time amazing Augustus designed some six cathedrals, forty churches and further numbers of convents, seminaries, monasteries and colleges. In his spare time he designed castles and grand houses too, and oh yes, contributed designs to the Palace of Westminster while he was at it. We first encountered Pugin’s multi-faceted genius at Milton Abbey where we admired his monumental stained glass window. We found more of his handiwork in Lyme Regis and finally, by the end of our English fortnight, the fruits of his labours at Westminster.

Loyal readers of Peregrinations will be unsurprised to hear that I kept one eye cocked for shadows of 1914-18. Almost every Dorset village we traversed has a community war memorial. I looked at them all, photographed each, contemplated the infinity of loss and grief reflected in every list of names.  Not just in village squares did we find relics of the Great War. More often than not, if we managed to get inside a church we would see a tablet of bronze or wood listing those among the parish who died at Loos or the Somme or Passchendaele.

Among all the big and important things to see we found small ones too: post boxes in continuous service since the reign of Victoria, weather vanes. Yes, weather vanes. Weather vanes novel, strange and charming. Soon I was photographing every interesting weather vane I spotted. In the fullness of time i will dedicate a Flickr set exclusively to the myriad weather vanes of Dorset.

No walking trip of ours is solely about wearing out boot leather. In the evenings we went out looking for a good repast. An enduring legacy of the long-ago year I lived in India is an abiding love of Indian cuisine. All in, we spent just ten nights but on five of them we managed to find Indian restaurants, every one of them worthy. In villages not blessed with subcontinental dining options we did just fine opting for local fruits de mer—haddock, cod or calamari.

After five days deprived of the scent of salt air we finally arrived at the Dorset coast and began reaching for some of the same superlatives that served so well in Catalonia. From West Bay to Lyme Regis the vistas are truly spectacular; the coastal trail winds up and over high sea cliffs. Those climbing to a height of land are rewarded with magnificent views to east and west. This part of England—the ‘Jurassic Coast’ of Devon and Dorset—is England’s only natural world heritage site. As you might deduce from the name, fossils abound.

Lyme Regis on the coast was the end destination of our walk. After six days of intensive, all-day walking we rewarded ourselves with—what else—a day of walking. We prowled the Lyme shoreline to look for fossils. We found many—ammonites all, some small, some sixteen inches across. The nice lady at the visitor centre mentioned a brochure describing a town walking tour.  We asked for one and went on our way. The rewards include a Pugin church and a wavy-roofed old inn where Beatrix Potter wrote ‘The Tale of Little Pig Robinson’.

Far From the Madding Crowd is the title of one of Hardy’s novel. We felt grateful to Dorset for affording us no madding crowds at all. Then we went to London for three days where the story was altogether different . . .