Blogs from Dorset, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 5

After a lovely full English breakfast, we walked across the road to St Michael’s church. The graveyard there had the grave of Alice Hargreaves, who was the Alice in the Alice in Wonderland story written by C. S. Lewis. After a walk along the high street, we checked out and set off to Corfe Castle. Corfe Castle is a ruined medieval castle, set on the top of a hill. You can either catch a steam train to it or drive into the village of Corfe. The village has all old style houses with slate or thatched roofs and local stone. We had a late lunch in the Bankes Arms Hotel in the village and then drove to Swanage, where we will be staying for the next 2 nights. On the way, there was a very scenic ... read more

I31st August to 4th September End of the Road festival is new to me though I've often been to Larmer Tree festival, which is held on the same site. I should know the site well, but it's a different layout which has confused me all weekend. More of the woods are available with different activities going on, and by wandering around I eventually found the cinema tent and the ship disco, and a secret site with John Horn from Incredible String Band singing with his daughter, who had a beautiful voice and is a whizz on the piano. A quick flurry of rain on Thursday showed the limitations of my makeshift awning, which became a water storage bag. Some adjustments helped and the relentless rain on Sunday didn't collapse it. I was working a 5-hour a ... read more

So what a day! What should have been a simple 2.5hr train ride London (Waterloo) to Wool, Dorset ended up a 4.5hr experience, with an hour delay at Waterloo due to points failure and then a train change at Southampton, with no one really knowing what was going on. Then after being told the train stopped at wool it wasn't going to, however the conductor Phil and train driver were amazing, organising a stop at Wool so we could get off. Above and beyond and we were very thankful. Quick 10 minute taxi to Bere Regis and then it got worse again. The Royal Oak Hotel wasn't open until 5pm (was just before 3pm when we arrived) and no phones were answered. Lovely neighbour put on the Facebook Village page about us and the response was ... read more

After our first getaway a couple of weeks ago in Shropshire I was eager to go away again with Fiona. We have discussed travelling a lot and its apparent that Fiona had done some travelling but not as much as she would have liked. I decided to do a surprise trip somewhere and book a B&B for a couple of nights. I really wanted us to stay at a nice B&B in a rural part of Dorset but it was not possible due to a tight budget so a city like Bournemouth was the cheaper option and having a car to venture out to remote areas seemed a good game plan. I pick up Fiona and she has no idea where we're going. She knows we're going away for a couple of nights and will be ... read more

Weymouth – Aug 30 – Sept 6 In looking at the chart it appears that making the crossing of the English Channel from a little farther east than Dartmouth would work out well as we could then head directly to Cherbourg and not have to do an overnight passage. We have done plenty of overnights, but if we don’t have to while making the crossing all the better. In deciding where to head we had thought of two ports, each very close to each other, Portland or Weymouth. In talking to others we decided on Weymouth as we had figured we had to bite the bullet and buy 3 batteries for our boat as it would be easier doing it in English than in French! We heard there was a working chandlery in Weymouth as well ... read more