loitering within tent

A few notes from our brief trip to Dorset over the Bank Holiday weekend: -

• We stayed in a campsite called The Dorset Hideaway, which does what it says on the tin by being tucked away in a secluded rural spot. "The middle of nowhere" is a relative term, especially in southern England, but it is a mile or two from the nearest villages. Those villages are Shave Cross, which is really just a few houses and a pub which appears to be currently closed, and Whitchurch Canonicorum, which is very slightly larger and has a pub which does appear to be a going concern, though we didn't get a chance to call in. Anyway, the campsite is perfectly nice, though it pushes the "glamping" angle quite heavily (as you'll see from the website) and, possibly as a consequence, doesn't really have enough toilet facilities for us plebs in the tent field, especially on the hottest weekend of the year when it's busy. 
• It's a pretty handy location for the various beaches in the area, though, which is an important consideration when it's scorchingly hot. As it happens the Jurassic Coast isn't the best place for traditional sandy beaches; most of them are either various grades of shingle or, at best, a mixture of sand and shingle. Great for fossil hunting, less good for sandcastle building. The best beach for traditional stuff like that is probably Charmouth, which just happens to be the one we were closest to; other more shingly experiences can be had at Bridport, Lyme Regis, Sidmouth and Exmouth. We did also go to Weymouth, which has a reasonably sandy beach, although as it was Bank Holiday Monday when we went you'd have struggled to see any of the sand through the expanse of shoulder-to-shoulder flesh that was occupying it. 
• We didn't go to the beach in Bridport, but we did go to a couple of food and drink establishments that I deem worthy of mention: firstly Mercato Italiano, somewhat bizarrely situated in a warehouse on an industrial estate but serving excellent pizzas, and secondly Soulshine, a cafe in the centre of town which supposedly does nice food but which we only had time to pop into quickly for a refreshing glass of fizzy rhubarbade. 
• We briefly met up with some friends for a lunchtime picnic after packing up at the campsite on the Wednesday - they live in Bournemouth so we went for something in between there and the campsite. I selected this location, fairly unscientifically, by looking at an Ordnance Survey map and finding a big green area that also had the big blue and white P that denotes a car park. That turned out to be Powerstock Common Nature Reserve, a funny little place tucked away under a disused railway bridge (more on this in a minute) and featuring all manner of delightful species of butterfly, newt, and, thrillingly, a population of rare mud snails who I would hope have the good sense not to slurp out onto the paths to be crunchily trodden on by unsuspecting walkers.
• But enough of that heartwarming gastropod-centric nature crap, you'll be saying, what about this disused railway you so mouth-wateringly dangled in front of us just a bullet point or so back? Well. This is the remnants of the old Bridport branch line which connected with the still-operational main line between Bristol and Weymouth, was earmarked for closure in the Beeching report of the early 1960s but limped on until 1975 before eventually closing. All the track has been lifted and part of the trackbed incorporated into a circular walk round the nature reserve of probably no more than 4 kilometres or so, but which we didn't have the time, inclination or, in some cases, shoes to attempt.

• The bridge itself incorporates a height/clearance warning sign and you just know I checked that shit against the database from the earlier post. This is in a much more commonly-encountered height range than the weirdly low bridge at Bishton so it's already been bagged; the example given is from Bromsgrove. All I would say to whoever daubed the accompanying graffiti, which says, if you're struggling, "STOP DEMOLITION OF THIS BRIDGE" is: well, so far so good, lads.
• Lastly, it was Hazel's birthday on the Tuesday - all I would say here is: if you have chocolate-based presents to hand over on an occasion such as this, then a tent on the hottest few days of the year isn't the best place to store them, at least if you want to ensure they're in tip-top store-fresh condition when they eventually get opened.