Boxing Day walk to Worbarrow
Dec. 26th, 2025 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puddleshark
A grey Boxing Day, with a bitter north-east wind blowing on the high ground. Not a day to be walking the ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort, so I did the other traditional Boxing Day walk, the more sheltered one, across the Army Ranges to the sea at Worbarrow.
Down the chalk track from Whiteways Hill to the deserted village at Tyneham. In the distance, Worbarrow Tout and the sea. I was quite late setting off this morning, and the Range Warden had already opened the gates at the top of the lane by the time I reached Tyneham, the first cars beginning to arrive in the car park.
Worbarrow Bay.
A narrow path threads through the grass and between a scattering of concrete tank traps, leading down to the little cove behind the Tout.
Most visitors gravitate to the wide sweep of Worbarrow Bay, but the cove behind the Tout is a secret. A quiet spot to sit on a piece of driftwood on the shingle, drink coffee from a flask, watch the waves wash in, and the gulls soar by.
Back towards Tyneham. The stone track starting to be busy with dog-walkers & with families with small children. Parents with pushchairs navigating a careful way around the puddles and between the pot-holes.
As I was heading back up the hill, groups of walkers descending on their Boxing Day pilgrimage to Tyneham.
Stained glass of 1911, in the church at Tyneham.
Shoreline
Date: 2025-12-26 06:01 pm (UTC)Usually I'm seeing the scenes you're walking from the water. I've accomplished a few sailing trips in your neighbourhood, but not yet past the solent. But soon.
One of your last posts had the cliffs being chalky white; and was surprised it wasn't here. But I guess I shouldn't be, I'm sure a geologist can describe why. The cliffs are reminiscent to the ones we hike nearby, on the Canadian east coast. But today with an additional dusting of snow, windy and -13ºC. Brrrrr.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-27 04:36 pm (UTC)Mind you, I like pretty much any style of stained glass!
Re: Shoreline
Date: 2025-12-27 06:27 pm (UTC)This stretch of the coast is mostly chalk cliffs, but the strata around Pondfield are particularly folded up and jumbled, and must greatly entertain the geologists.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-27 06:34 pm (UTC)I do love stained glass. I paid a visit to the stained glass museum in Ely last year, and it was fabulous.
But I'm not a big fan of the sort of Victorian stained glass we get in many Dorset churches. So much of it is of poor quality and the detail has degraded, or it's heavy-handed in design.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 07:57 am (UTC)Have you been to St Nicholas in Moreton? Wonderful engraved windows.