coastal camping idyll

No matter how long you spend in a place, or how often you visit, there is always more to explore, more nooks and crannies to unearth... such as Warbarrow Bay, reached via Tyneham, the village evacuated when the War Office took it over. The residents never returned. It's unutterably sad, as if the echoes of those lives cling to the crumbling remnants of the hamlet; the world has moved on, but Tyneham school house is preserved as if in aspic.

Fifteen minutes walk away, rockpooling hasn't changed much...

although the photo opportunities are more selfconscious!

Kites get more sophisticated every year - check out this fabulous multi-coloured galleon riding the wind...


The moving image the over-riding influence everywhere now - in Lulworth Cove, Isla was thrilled to watch SMART setting up a sequence around a ship constructed from beachcombed detritus...

while we adults were tickled by the warning sign in the village by Corfe Castle.





from my journal:
the elements so skin-close as to talk to your soul...
the last three dry days have toasted the moisture to a greying icing on the grass...
across Lulworth Cove, tinies and toddlers with sun hats and buckets, poking around rocky shallows, pudgy middle-aged couples clambering up the slopes, parents with babies rucksacked on their backs, white t-shirted pre-pubescent Eastern Europeans...
flies casting dancing shadows on my skin...

memories from this year:
a full moon on Monday night illuminating my compartment in our tent
porridge for breakfast (the only cooking I did)
walking, walking... and more walking!
oodles of writing time
Carlo bringing his ipod - cracking tunes! (including some of his)
a very early walk to the beach (6.30am - what was I doing up?)
seeing my second adder (if I hadn't scared it, I would have been able to photograph it)
maybugs and glow worms
that sense of wellbeing... more intense than on any of our previous trips
having a solitary last day, writing in the sun, walking and taking snaps

five go mad in Dorset

The five happy campers this year - myself, and left to right, Carlo, Isla, Carole and Steve. Rather a bumpy start to this year's break - no Ath and crew. Ath couldn't get time off work. Rats.


Still, for the sixth summer running, the weather smiled indulgently on us... the Simpson skies above featured most days - or wispy tendrils hazing the horizon.


Only one day of grey clouds, very full clouds which chucked water at us - for all of half a day!



Isla shared (some of) the chores. Although Carole and I took the boat down most of the way to the beach...






You wouldn't think you could run up this slope... Well, I couldn't.
Atholl did, one year.
But this shot was probably the only moping I had time for...
And, with a long list of chores to tackle, work to get to in the morning - this is all I have time for.