Brownsea Island and Jurassic Walkway

It must have been a bit of an eventless week - while eating a jacket potato for lunch one day I wondered 'What colour are carbohydrates?'  I pondered this for a while even though I know even if the little things aren't white everything bad for you is a carbo and diets say 'stay off white foods' which are pretty hard to resist in my opinion (more than chocolate - but Harry would disagree). Then I wondered when everyone said that the weather on Sunday would be 30+  what on earth would we talk about if the weather was consistently nice blue sky, windless and warm every day!! Saturday dawned and we were up and on our way to Brownsea Island - a National Trust property in the Poole Harbour - and one of the few homes to the endangered red squirrel.  We caught the little ferry across and wandered to a high point for lunch, enjoyed the sea views (though the photos would look so much better if the sky was blue - have you heard that before?) and the little squirrels came to say hello as we munched on our french bread.  George IV visited here before he became king (probably had a bit more of a lavish lunch) and said "I had no idea there had been such a delightful spot in the whole of the kingdom".  He should visit Kapiti Island (which incidentally when I searched on the web for Brownsea Island came up as another island to visit). We then wandered along the beach (lots of mud and orange rocks) and up the hill to where Lord Baden Powell had organised his first scout camp over 100 years ago.  He was a Lieutenant General in the British Army and wrote the Scouting for Boys a year later - obviously inspired by the success of the first camp. Scouting is still very popular over here and there were at least 2 troops enjoying the island while we visited.  Some were learning water skills, others reluctantly doing their community service by clearing away broken branches and some thinking about eating.  The programme for the first experimental scouting camp went like this...
Day 1 - Prelimary - setting up camp and patrols and given duties.
Day 2 - Campaigning - hut and mat making, tying knows, lighting fires, cooking and boat management.
Day 3 - Observation - training the eyesight, tracking, memorising details and landmarks.
Day 4 - Woodcraft - learning to stalk, studying animals, birds, plants and stars.
Day 5 - Chivalry - honour and cougage, charity, thrift, loyalty, unselfishness and doing a good turn every day.
Day 6 - Saving life - first aid, resuce from fire, gas, drowning and runaway horses.
Day 7 - Patriotism - knowlege of geography, the British Empire, helpfulness and the duties of a good citizen.
Day 8 - Sports day - games and activites incorporating the previous days learnings.
The broken branches were caused by clearing of the undergrowth - the main food for the red squirrel is the little pinecone (you see them on the ground chewed like we would chew an apple - wide at the ends and narrow in the middle), and the trees do not seed and grow if there is too much undergrowth - so we were told. The view from the island across to Sandbanks was enticing so after the ferry trip we drove around the Millionaires Strip.  Although the houses were large we decided that all those belonging to famous people (eg Madonna and Guy Ritchie) were hidden behind trees because we certainly didn't even get a glimpse of these castle like houses though they were bigger than the standard terraced housing we see so much here.  Anyway, it is thanks to a rather eccentric lady who bought the island back in the 1920's that Brownsea Island did not go the same way as Sandbanks - Mary Bonham Christie or better known as "the Demon of Brownsea". She wanted the island to be a nature reserve - which in other words meant 'do nothing for 40 or so years'.  And so the wilderness grew.  She didn't like uninvited guests which included fisherman (they were tipped out of their boats when digging for worms in the mudflats), residents (she evicted the residents of St Mary's village - the fourth generation of local inhabitants) or day trippers who took the challenge to swim across the island and if courageous enough stayed the night and evaded capture.  Two cute little stories from two children who's families were allowed to visit the island during the reign of Mary Christie....

"Thank you for the day.  I like your beard.  I like the one-legged chicken".

"We went to tea at the Castle and started with a fruit salad, which had been prepared days earlier and was covered with dust and dead insects.This was followed by a salad with brown-edged lettuce leaves and curled up stale bread and butter. There was deer in the kitchen, curtains in shreds, windows broken and live rats and mice on the table.  Mrs Bonham Christie had the audacity to admonish me for not using my side plate correctly".

Our next stop was Swanage - a car ferry this time - to a very typical English seaside resort.  We wandered around the coast and onto the 100 year old Victorian pier which has been renovated magnificently. This is the place where you can hire a deck chair for £2.50 a day, rent or own a little bathing shed (with net curtains - incidentally a bathing shed is on sale for £150,000 somewhere along the English coast - it has marble bench tops!!), go for a dip in the very cold sea, wander the sandy beach (not rocky), view the white cliffs from afar, moor your fairly expensive boat, enjoy some impressive graffiti and enjoy some reasonable fish and chips (where the cook apologised for the fish being 'upside down' in the polystyrene dish - we presume because the skin on our take away fillet was on the upside!! Oh for fish with no skin.). 

A bit more driving along the peninsula and we came to Corfe Castle. Having been to Brownsea which inspired Enid Blyton to write the Famous Five on Kirrin Island we were now visiting the castle that inspired Kirrin Castle - these stories "epitomise the golden age of childhood and of English summers as we once knew them. The sun always shone whenever the Famous Five went on holiday"http://www.gingerpop.co.uk/We nearly didn't make it to the castle - too much walking on half a century legs had led to a bargain - car park near the castle entrance means we go in - no car park drive on to dinner and an early night. Surprisingly, a car park appeared only a few steps away and so we enjoyed the wander up the hill soon forgetting our aches and pains as we soaked in the history of more ruins. Situated high above the valley on the Purbeck hills there were lots of places to explore, windows to look out, crumbling walls to cautiously step around and steps to climb which provide a view of the town with the same name. Like many castles it was built in instalments over the centuries by the various royal families like Henry I, John, Henry III and Richard the Lionheart. There are some rather grim stories which makes me pleased I live in this day and age where we all have a right to our opinion and birthright ... a 13th century woman called Maud de Braose and her son William who annoyed King John of England were "walled alive" inside the castle dungeon, where without food and water they didn't last long. Eleanor of Brittany, sister of the murdered prince Arthur and heiress to England was imprisoned there for some years and so was Princess Margaret and her sister Isobel, daughters of King William I of Scotland. Elizabeth I sold the castle to her Lord Chancellor and it then changed hands a number of times and under went a number of sieges like most other castles during those many centuries of local and royal unrest.

Long summer evenings means lots of daylight to explore and so after driving through the quaint little village of Lulworth Cove (thatched cottages and gardens) we stopped for a cup of tea in the carpark and then headed off to explore.  I don't think that Enid Blyton was inspired by this cove but we were.  We wandered along the rocky shore, up the steep path (all fours were required for both the little and the big) to get a good view of the sea pounding the rock formations.  This is one of the Jurassic walkway and this time I hadn't really done my homework - around the other way were fossilised trees in the cliffs - a missed opportunity.

The promised 30 degree day arrived (it reached about 25 at moments) and after eating our 'hotel breakfast' (delivered on a tray to our room - 1 small fruit juice, 1 bruised banana, 1 apple, 1 croissant with butter and jam - we shouldn't complain cos we had a very nice Thai meal the night before in the hotel restaurant - perhaps our expectations had been raised a bit) we drove around Weymouth and Portland.  Driving to the top of Portland hill, we didn't hold out much hope because the sun was clearly masked by a low lying fog - we entertained ourselves by walking briskly up the hill, taking photos of the mist and looking through the telescope in the hoping of seeing something - but alas no.  The fog didn't seem to lift around this area and was still over the peninsula when we had been around a water garden (to be missed if you are short of time - but it seemed the place to take your elderly parents for a wander on a Sunday afternoon) and found Chesil Beach (an interesting long, highly piled rocks which separates the sea and a shallower inlet) - this is the place to try your hand at catching mackerel (which were running this weekend said the local rag, but no one seemed to be telling the fish).  It was great - walking on rocks was like running another marathon - and so on the way back we found an overgrown path full of corn which we sang our way through to the amusement of others tackling the pebbly path on the other side of the corn.

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow,
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow,
The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,
An' it looks like its climbin' clear up to the sky.

Oh what a beautiful morning,
Oh what a beautiful day,
I've got a wonderful feeling,
Everything's going my way.

And then it was on to a sandy beach for some rest and recreation before heading back to Bristol (still too cold for a swim though!).