A Walk to White Nothe

[puddleshark]

A grey morning, strong cold wind. Left the car in the National Trust car park on the hill above Ringstead Bay. Fine views over the bay and the Isle of Portland, but precious little light for landscape photography. Nondescript grey cloud, and an undecided greyish sea.



Pulled down my sleeves over my gloveless hands against the bite of the wind (fool, to come out without gloves in March), and set off briskly along the white chalk hilltop track.


Where the path descends, a track on the right leads down the combe to scattered villas and the small wooden church of St Catherine by the Sea.


In the trees, the chimneys of Holworth House. I think it's quite a grand house, but there's almost nothing of it to be seen through the trees, and it's not mentioned in Pevsner.


The area of dark scrub in the centre of the picture is Burning Cliff. "From 1826, the cliff smouldered with an underground fire for several years due to bituminous shale, hence the name... The fire is thought to have been started by heat caused by decomposing pyrite, common in bituminous shale. It emitted sulphurous fumes. " en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Cliff


Portland Roads.


A climb up through sheep fields...



White Nothe, a chalk headland which juts out like a nose, hence the name. Below is the Undercliff, a crumpled landscape created by prehistoric landslides.




Clay paths. No fun at all to walk in claggy weather. But fortunately last week's bitter winds dried them nicely.


A twisty path through the folded land at the top of the landslips.




On White Nothe, a row of old Coastguard Cottages (one restored, with solar panels, and the others in the process of losing their roofs to the wind), and a World War II pillbox which used to have a Royal Observer Corps observation post on top.



"Smugglers Path to White Nothe Undercliff - steep hazardous route". Helpfully labelled for smugglers. This is right next to the coastguard cottages, so the smugglers here must have been particularly brazen. Wikipedia reckons this is the path that features in the children's book Moonfleet.




The view eastwards from White Nothe. In the distance, Bat Head with its tiny arch, Bat Hole, (and beyond it, out of sight, Durdle Door). And in the far distance, the dark line of St Aldhelm's Head, where I went walking with the hares a few weeks ago.





Returning the way I came, suddenly March decided to be kind, on a whim. For a while, there was blue sky and fluffy white cloud, blue sea, and an almost-warmth in the sun. In the fields, a skylark was singing. But by the time I got back to the car, March had given up feeling optimistic, and sea and sky were grey again.