Day 91: Raining in Dorset

Slightly frustrating day today. The main reason we'd come to Dorset was to visit the Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage site, a huge long section of coastline that stretched roughly from near our rooms, about a hundred miles further west. It's a great example of geology, where you can clearly see different rock formations and dates and with clear indicators of all the stuff you learned in geology class about plate tectonics and so on. It's also where lots of dinosaur bones and ancient fossils have been found.

Because it's so large, we'd planned to cover the eastern end today, then cover the western end tomorrow on our drive westwards toward Cornwall. But we woke up to rain on the roof and fog on the moors behind our room. The forecast wasn't promising, but after a light breakfast we set off in hope.

First stop was Old Harry Rocks, a group of rock stacks (sort of like the Twelve Apostles back in Australia) named for a local pirate in the 17th century. We parked nearby, but realised it was probably a 2-3 kilometre round trip walk to properly see the stacks, which neither of us felt that inclined to do in the rain. We wandered out on the beach and took a few photos, but they were pretty distant and not that impressive.

Realising that the rain wasn't letting up, we decided to head for the museum in Dorchester instead. There was some good stuff in here, including an enormous pliosaur skull (sort of like a huge killer whale) which was found on a nearby beach by an amateur!

We drove over to the beach in Weymouth for a quick look, but still lots of rain hampered our efforts. Visited a classic pie shop where we both had a delicious pie with mash for lunch, very huge serves and very tasty.

Decided to just cut our losses and head back to the rooms, where we spent the rest of the afternoon writing, editing video and planning. In the late afternoon the rain finally let up, so we went out for a walk around the little hamlet and explored the nearby paddocks. Schnitzel was very excited to have a lot of grass to run around on!

Back to the room where we had pizza for dinner, made fresh by Tesco and cooked handily in the oven by me! Thankfully the forecast for tomorrow looks much better, so fingers crossed!Read more