Living up to its billing

It's nice to spend a few days in a part of the country much less infected with Covid than the London area. The disease is still out there but the fear factor is reduced. Public transport is a safer option here and I take to the country buses---which are nearly empty anyway. So I board the X53 north-west towards West Bay from the previous trip. The first stop is the bucolic-named Burton Bradstock, a pretty village in warm-coloured stone. A track leads down to the beach, on the famed Jurassic coast. No fossils today, and an incoming tide that washes over my feet as I search for a composition, but a pleasant walk. Back towards Weymouth is another attractive village, Abbotsbury, known for its swannery (closed for the winter) and some more historic buildings making the best of the overcast weather.

It's always nice to find something unexpected, as I do the next day on a bus ride towards Portland Bill, the southern tip of the Isle of Portland. Linked to the mainland only by the causeway of the Chesil Beach, Portland isn't quite an island but gives that feeling of being on the edge of the world that always fascinates me. On the eastern side of the peninsula, a path leads past huge boulders lie around from former quarries that used to furnish many London buildings in the famed Portland stone. And out of nowhere looms an enormous baroque chapel, St. George's, guarding a cemetery over the western clifftops. Like the chapel, the ornate headstones look as if they've been transplanted from southern Europe or even further afield. If it wasn't for the December chill, Portland could feel halfway to Italy or Spain already.Read more