Déjà vu (and some new stuff)

We have just returned from three wintery weeks in England – a fabulous Xmas in the North-East followed by New Year celebrations in Dorset. Graeme & Mercedes and Daniel managed to make the long journey from New Zealand. So Xmas was a real family affair.

Unsurprisingly we revisited many of our usual haunts and as we sorted through the photo collection we couldn’t resist making some comparisons.

Durham

It was good to see Boylan boys keen to keep up the traditional Xmas day snooze…

The Crawfords moved into Tudhoe Village in time for Xmas 1968 and Nigel probably began roaming through the local woodland and river banks shortly after this. In all this time nothing much has changed. There are just one or two ‘new’ houses in the village, the farm buildings have been converted to houses and the once grand white house opposite the Green Tree is now a ruin. At some point in the last 50 years trees were planted on the village green.

We have only just realised that it was in fact exactly 50 years this Xmas since the Crawford clan came to Tudhoe. That would have been an excuse for celebration had anyone actually realised at the time.

Nigel has probably been visiting Durham since the family moved back north from Weybridge in 1964. Sue has been dragged there on every visit north since about 1982. We have lost count of how many times we have gazed out from Prebends Bridge.

Another great party at Sue and John’s. Same old crowd. New dog!

Dorset

After an early morning flight from Newcastle to Southampton (thank you David for the chauffeur service), followed by a train to Wareham, we were collected by Claire from the station. At least Sue and the luggage were collected. There was no room for Nigel who had to walk. The excess luggage was blamed on the set of curtains that Claire had purchased while in Abu Dhabi a few months earlier. Not sure why that visit didn’t make it to the blog!

Wareham is a beautiful Saxon town nestled between the River Frome and the River Piddle (I promise I am not making this up) bordering Poole Harbour. Jonathan has lived here all his life and we have been visiting since we lived in Dorset before moving to New Zealand in 1987.

Wareham Quay is on Nigel’s list of places that you cannot have too many photos of – along with Durham Cathedral and High Force.

The best thing about photography in winter is that sunrise is at an entirely civilised hour and sunset is well before it’s time to go to the pub.

We made the most of crisp winter days – no rain for the whole time we were in England – revisiting our favourite Dorset coastal and inland walks and even finding places that we had never been to.

Durdle Door is a short hike up from Lulworth Cove. We brought the boys here in 1997. Graeme snapped the picture of us snoozing in the sun. We couldn’t resist staging another.

This stretch of the Dorset coast has been branded The Jurassic Coast and is famous for all types of fossils. Kimmeridge Bay is one of the best places to find fossils and Sue cannot resist searching for more to add to the collection.

Nigel, of course, just took more photos.

The tower in the photo above is Clavell Tower, built as an observatory and folly in 1830. When we visited with the boys in 1997 it was just a ruin, perilously close to the crumbling cliff face . Since then it has been taken apart brick by brick, moved 25 metres back from the cliff and is now available to rent as a single bedroom holiday cottage.

The Dorset Coast Path from the abandoned village of Tyneham to Lulworth Cove is one of our favourite walks. Nobody describes it better than Bill Bryson …

“my diminishing physical resources were entirely consumed by the challenge of hauling myself up a killer slope that led to the summit of Rings Hill, high above Worbarrow Bay. The view was sensational – I could see all the way back to Poole Harbour – but what commanded my attention was the cruel discovery that the path immediately plunged back down to sea level before starting back up an even more formidable flanking hill. I fortified myself with a Panda Cola and plunged on.
The neighbouring eminence, called Bindon Hill, was a whopper. It not only rose straight up to the lower reaches of the troposphere but then presented a lofty up-and-down ridge that ran on more or less for ever. By the time the straggly village of West Lulworth hove into view and I began a long, stumbling descent, my legs seemed able to bend in several new directions and I could feel blisters bubbling up between my toes. I arrived in Lulworth in the delirious stagger of someone wandering in off the desert in an adventure movie, sweat-streaked, mumbling and frothing little nose rings of Panda Cola.
But at least I had surmounted the most challenging part of the walk and now I was back in civilization, in one of the most delightful small seaside resorts in England. Things could only get better.”
Excerpt From: Bill Bryson. “Notes From a Small Island.”

Graeme and Mercedes returned to New Zealand after leaving Durham. Daniel joined us again in Dorset for New Year celebrations and of course to walk more of the coast path. This time Studland Beach to Swanage.

New Years Eve – party at Claire and Jonathan’s

There was one nostalgic walk that we were absolutely compelled to do. Bere Regis was our first home after leaving university. We had a little two bedroomed terraced house, sandwiched between thatched cottages in this sleepy little village.

At least once a week throughout the year, and definitely more often during the summer, we would complete a circuit, through the delightfully named, Shitterton, up onto a ridge and back down Rye Hill. Sometimes it was just the two of us but often we would take the neighbours dog or the crazy black labrador from the local pub.

This time we discovered that much of the farmland leading up to the ridge had been planted with trees. Chatting to the barmaid in the Drax Arms we learned that the land had been bought by Brian May of Queen fame. He is an ardent conservationist and is creating a new woodland to protect local wildlife.

The old Shitterton sign has been stolen so many times they have replaced it with a stone one!

New for us…

Although we must have driven past Lulworth Castle hundreds of times we had never actually been inside or explored the vast estate that makes up the castle grounds. The castle was closed to visitors for the winter but we were still able to go into the 15th century Church of St. Andrew, glimpse the 18th century Roman Catholic chapel, walk a tiny fraction of the estates’ woodland and visit the delightful miniature fort on a lake that was created in 1837 for the sole purpose of model-boat testing for the Admiralty.