The SOUTH day 3

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After our very full Day 2, we were a bit sore and weary when the alarm went off at 8:00 am the next morning. But we pulled ourselves out of bed, packed up the car once more, and headed off with our now slightly smelly dogs. Wicket was feeling better after his tick extraction, but still wasn't sure whether or not he had forgiven us for giving him a bath the night before. Ziggy, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy to be on the road again. He lept up onto his shelf and watched out the back of the car as we drove off toward Kimmeridge Bay. We weren't sure our weather luck was going to hold today as the clouds seemed very dark as we pulled into the empty gravel parking lot near the bay. Kimmeridge Bay sits at the far east end of the Jurassic Coast, meaning that despite its name, Kimmeridge Bay is actually from the Cretaceous period. For those of you who were not dinosaur nuts as children, the Cretaceous period spans from about 140-65 million years ago and was the period with the most diverse populations of dinosaurs. Once again, we were the only people on the beach, and in fact the only people we could see for miles. It was a bit cold that morning as we walked out onto the rocks, but it hadn't rained yet. We were keeping our fingers crossed.

Wicket and Ziggy weren't so sure they wanted to go back into the ocean today, but they were more than happy to play in the small tidal pools which were forming between the rocks. Well, to be exact Ziggy was playing in them and Wicket seemed happy to admire himself in the reflection. That is, until he slipped on a rock and fell into one. Wicket was turning out to be the cursed traveller. However, like a trooper, he shook himself off and continued playing, but he definitely gave the tidal pools a wide berth after that. Martin and I walked around a bit more slowly looking for fossils. We'd only been on the beach about 10 minutes when we scored our first! Martin was just asking me how we would know if we found a fossil and what would they look like. I was trying to think of how to describe what a fossil in a rock would look like when I walked right over the top of one. So instead I just said, "they'll look like that". I was pretty pleased with myself. The fossil was perfect. It was spiral shaped and about the size of a dinner plate. You could still see all the segments of the body. It was really cool. Sadly, it was the best find we had all day, but it was still worth the trip. We moved down the bay and off the flat stones onto the more challenging climbing rocks. Ziggy was fearless, leaping from rock to rock without even a second thought. Wicket, as you might expect, was less confident. He followed along for a while, but soon decided that this wasn't worth the effort. So he hung back whining until mommy came back and carried him the rest of the way. Ziggy made fun of him relentlessly for it. On the way back to the car the sun decided to peek its head out from behind the clouds and from then on we had spectacular weather. A couple people started to arrive in the car park just as we were leaving. We congratulated ourselves for being tough enough to get there at 9:30 when it was still cold and empty.

On the drive out of Kimmeridge Bay we saw a beautiful old thatch-roofed cottage. I'd never really seen one before, but they really are amazing. I can't actually believe that those roofs keep any water out at all, but they are very impressive looking. The next stop on this day was, bizarrely, a military firing range. Its not a bleak as it sounds. The small village of Tyneham was evacuated during World War Two and has been laying in ruin ever since. So the military bought the town and all the land around it use for firing and tank practice. However, on the weekends it is open to the public and we were lucky enough to be in the area on Saturday. It was very beautiful. We walked a short way to some picnic tables just above the beach and had some lunch. The view was spectacular. The ocean was a brighter shade of teal than I've ever seen outside the Caribbean and the sand was as white as could be. The sun was shining and we were very happy. Off to the right of where we were sitting you could see a very large hill with a path running up the steep side of it. We watched in awe as a runner (obviously army) ran up the hill and back down again. You don't realize just how high the mountain is until you realize that its been 15 minutes and the runner is only half way up.

I was just laughing to myself about how stupid you'd have to be to want to run up that monster of a hill when Martin informed me that we would be joining him. I laughed again, but sadly this time it was not a joke. We finished our food and set off for the hill. It looked even steeper from the bottom. It was one of those deceptive hills too; the ones which start out with a slow gradient and get steeper and steeper as you go up. We stopped about 1/3 of the way up to rest. Looking down on the beach from the hill, the cool water seemed to be teasing us as we huffed and puffed in pain. But we persevered. After stopping 3 more times, we finally made it to the top. I should point out, of course, that the dogs had no trouble what so ever climbing this hill. They ran circles around us as we trudged and seemed to say "what the hell are we waiting for" every time we stopped for a breather. But once we were at the top the dogs were happy to stop for a drink. The top of the hill was a place called Flower Barrow, which was an old iron age burial ground and fort.

From Flower Barrow we had a great view out across the neighboring towns. The first thing we saw as we looked out was the very well preserved Ludlow Castle. It almost made the climb worth while. Almost. With legs like jelly, we carried on to the rest of the 3 miles walk. Luckily there were no other climbs and we finished the walk without too much trouble. Toward the end, we walked through the actual town of Tyneham. It was still very beautiful even though most of the buildings were ruined. Many of the flowers were starting to bloom and the sun was shining. It was hard to believe that during the week this was used as a place for the military to drive tanks and shoot things. Crazy.

Next on the agenda was Lulworth Cove and the famous Durdle Door (which sadly, we didn't actually see). We were very unimpressed with Lulworth. It was full of rich people who glared at us for having dogs (even though this was one of the few times all trip that they had to be on their leashes) and old people at ice cream stands. As if this wasn't bad enough the beach wasn't sand, but gravel. You could barely walk on it, but we were determined to make the most out of it and walked out into the cove. About half way around the weather decided it too thought Lulworth was crap and proceeded to piss down rain. That was it, we were leaving. We struggled as quickly as we could through the deep gravel and got the hell out of there.

Feeling slightly less lucky, we headed toward Abbotsbury and Chesil beach. Chesil beach is a strange natural phenomenon where the land forms a thin spit which juts out into the ocean, but isn't really connected to anything on the other side. It looks sort of like a long tail sticking off the land. So the ocean is actually on both sides of this thin spit of land, which in some places is only about 20 or 30 feet wide. Yet people actually live on these things. Very odd. Annoyingly this beach, which was very beautiful and once again empty, was also a gravel beach. We sat for a while and looked out into the ocean while the dogs played around, but after a while the dogs seemed less willing to walk on the gravel and we decided it was time to start our next walk. Ziggy seemed particularly sensitive to the gravel and I was worried I was going to have to carry him the whole way, but as soon as we got onto grass he was off running like the little madman he is. The walk was very pretty and we ended up walking through some sheep fields at the base of a old abbey (hence the name Abbotsbury). It was a very pleasant walk, and the sun came back out for us. There were a couple of small climbs that after this mornings "hill from hell" I could have done without, but we made it through.

After the walk it was time to head to the next hotel in a small coastal town outside Torquay. The drive was quite long and after the 7 or 8 miles we walked today (not to mention the climb) we were both exhausted by the time we arrived. The room was less of a bed and breakfast room and more of a guest house this time, which we thought would be really nice. Oh boy, were we wrong. We arrive about 7pm only to realize that despite the fact that the hotel had a menu up online, you were only allowed to eat dinner at precisely 6pm and only if you ordered your food at breakfast. Those of us who arrived that night were apparently just screwed. Oh well, we thought, we'd just order takeout like we had the night before and eat in the room. We sort of preferred that anyway given how tired we were. Once again, how wrong we were. Martin went out to ask the owners whether there were any good take away places nearby only to be directed to the 10 page rule book for guests which strictly prohibits any outside food on the premises. Ok, so we can't have dinner here, nor can we get take away, nor can we leave the dogs in the room. Ok, that makes things a little more difficult. We also noticed a few other rules which didn't really make a lot of sense. For example, there was a very nice back yard for the dogs to use (supposedly) however the dogs were not allowed off their leashes while in the yard and the only access to the yard was through the dining room which dogs were strictly forbidden to enter. The yard was also closed at 6pm each night. So even if you could figure out a way to get them into the yard without going into the dining room (go outside and toss them over the fence perhaps) they couldn't go in there at night anyway, which was the only time we were at the hotel. Brilliant. We stopped reading the rules there. We couldn't believe our bad luck in choosing to spend 2 nights in this place when both the others had been so nice and this place was such a nightmare.

Well, by this time it was about 8pm and we were starving. So we packed the poor dogs back into the car and drove town to the small harbor town of Paignton. Having no other choice, we left the dogs in the car in the parking garage and went to the first restaurant we could find. A small place called the Harbour Lights. It actually seemed very nice inside and the food was delicious. It was no Meeting House, but what can you expect from Paignton. As it turns out, we unwittingly walked into the nicest restaurant in Paignton. A fact that might have come in handy before we insulted the owner of the hotel by explaining that we'd just eaten at some random place called Harbour-something and that the food was just ok. He didn't like us much.

After dinner we borrowed a movie from the hotel selection (which was one of the few nice things about the hotel) and went to bed. In protest of their ridiculous rules we let Wicket sleep under the covers which will probably now smell a little like dung forever. Revenge is sweet.


To view the full set of photos from this day of our trip see our site on Flickr
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