Bit of a contrasting day from yesterday in terms of terrain. One which felt a lot like we were getting through to get to other bits of the path. Despite that, the weather was amazing and some of the views stunning....
Very comfortable night in West Bexington and the morning is beautiful...
The shingle is tough going as we get onto Chesil Beach.
A lone fisherman exploits the morning
Fortunately, the terrain changes to road, running alongside the shingle - even a few miles of that would have been brutal!
At Abbotsbury there is a great little cafe but this marks the point where the path leads away from the coast and around th back of the nature reserve to avoid disturbing the wildlife...
There are lots of new born lambs here.
Climbing inland there are great views over Chesil beach and the lush Dorset countryside.
This is St Katherine’s Chapel which we climb to up towards Abbotsbury. But this is not the reason for the climb...
This view is - it says in our documentation that this is the “third best view in Britain” but we don’t know who deemed that so. It is certainly pretty special though...
It doesn’t feel like we are on the coast any longer but could be anywhere in Dorset...
Come on!
We return to the reserve and start the long walk around it.
My favourite place for today - the views from here must be outstanding...
Eventually we get to the end of the Chesil Beach and look back on our achievements for the day.
It would be very easy at this point to just skip Portland altogether and save ourselves the 14.5 mile trek for tomorrow but that isn’t the point and we head on in. We will return here at some point tomorrow afternooon after we have walked around Portland...
There’s a pretty impressive multi-storey “boat car park” as we come onto the island.
And so we arrive in Chiswell and Fortuneswell which have seen better days - there is a lot of new building work going on here however. And the place is steeped in history.
Our B&B is pretty scruffy (for sale if anyone is interested!) but it is clean and the showers are hot. Bit of a difference from last night!
And there’s a great pub on the sea front called The Cove House Inn.
We are continuing to raise money for Meningitis Research - very many thanks to all who have donated so far. Please CLICK HERE or copy and paste this link if you would be so kind as to join them: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/steve-schrier
