SWCP Walk 49 Eype to Moonfleet Manor скачать в хорошем качестве

SWCP Walk 49 Eype to Moonfleet Manor

Shingle slog but some cliff top walking too. Although this leg marks the final knockings (leg 49 of our 54) on the SWCP it was for us the second walk we ever did on the SWCP. I guess by now it is apparent that Andy and me did a few walks “out of sequence”; well this was one. We had done just one walk on the north coast before coming down to Dorset. We stayed near one another but separately and met up four times over a week away in May 2021. We agreed that it would have been rude not to do a few SWCP walks and our wives seemed to be OK with it and my best beloved acted as "logistics" brilliantly. So, this was the second walk we ever did on the SWCP. Once again Andy stretched out the route beyond the recommended SWCP association one! So rather than get picked up the fetchingly honey-coloured stone village of Abbotsbury we walked on to a forlorn spot in the middle of nowhere - Moonfleet Manor. Emma did a heroic job in finding us in a remote and intriguing spot. Apart from the up and down in the first couple of miles this was pretty flat going and after Abbotsbury a long inland stretch with little to interest the coastal walker that has to be endured. We thought fellow walkers might like the Swannery and Priory. The golden-coloured stone of the domestic and civic buildings in Abbotsbury are a delight as is always the case in these handsome stone-built villages. The colours appeared stoic on a dull day whgen we walked through. Anyway, we started our second ever day out on the SWCP from our respective back-doors. A rare treat. We walked down through Eype to the coast and posed at the finger-sign for posterity before setting off eastwards and up and over the cliffs to West Bay on a grey, drizzly morning. This was a thrill. For the geologically minded the landslips on the 200ft or so high cliffs are dramatic as was “fault corner” which was the trigger point for a recent and very large landslip in the weakened Jurassic sands, silts and clays. I had taken beach level photographs the evening before and you can see these in this episode. As we reached West Bay Andy spotted locations from the TV series “Broadchurch” and I updated him on the macabre history of rope-making in Bridport and why it explains the very wide main street there. Up and over the classic postcard cliffs of East Cliff formed of a rock that underlies a lot of England and is an important economic resource, in places for water as an aquifer and in other as a reservoir rock for oil. The sandy and orange-coloured rocks are known worldwide as the Bridport Sands, from the Jurassic Period. Once we passed Burton Bradstock we had to settle for a long trudge along Chesil Beach. Andy had already sampled the pea-sized pebbly sand at West Bay. Hereabouts, the pebbles were slightly larger as was to be the pattern the further east we tramped. We were to walk the whole length of this colossal shingle beach. Some walkers walk the entire way on the beach itself. They are quite mad! Walking along the pebble beach is a slog. We lunched at West Bexington and headed on towards an inland detour to Abbotsbury. Strip Lynchets, bucolic cottages and a Swannery provide interest if you like that sort of thing. For me very much so in the case of the Medieval farm terracing, less so fort the land-grabbing religious stuff. Andy had suggested that we push on past the “official” end point for today’s walk; so we did. This meant endure a lengthy and tedious inland detour some distance from the coast proper before getting back to the coastal lagoon at Herbury. We were being picked up near Moonfleet Manor so were had to hurry over this last section. For me this was no issue as this proved to be one of the least interesting bits of walking we have done on the mighty SWCP. I seem to recall that the over-wrought story set here was compulsory reading at school; didn’t do a lot for me then either. So passed our second ever day of SWCP walking - and it has to be said walking fans that I was, “hooked already”. We covered around seventeen miles abut only a modest amount of ascent - altogether an easy to moderate day. Car parking is available near the beach at Eype Mouth (SY448911) but that is a tight lane to drive down to and then if you finish at Moonfleet Manor (approx ST619635) you need to park on the side of a lane.