Bournemouth; Saturday, 22 October, 2022

After an earlyish breakfast I headed out of the hotel and wandered down to the top of the East Cliff promenade high over the beach. Originally the quick way down to the beach from here would have been the East Cliff Lift, but that was damaged by a landslip in 2016 and six years later it still hadn’t been repaired, so instead I walked down the zig zag path that makes its way down the side of the hill to the beach.

I had a bit of a wander around the beach before heading on in towards the pier and the centre of Bournemouth. I had a quick look around the area around the pier and then headed up through the Lower Gardens, stopping off at the Aviary for a quick look at the tropical birds on display.

My friends then texted me to arrange meeting so we could head out over to the Isle of Purbeck as they were driving over. After meeting up we headed out of Bournemouth and down to Sandbanks, home to some of the most expensive property in the country, to pick up the chain ferry that crosses the short stretch of water between here and the Isle of Purbeck.

The total crossing time was less than 5 minutes and soon afterwards we were driving through the narrow country lanes of the Isle of Purbeck. We stopped off at a view point from where there were excellent views across the Isle as well as across to Sandbanks and Bournemouth itself.

From the view point we continued on driving down to the town of Corfe where we parked up near Norden station on the steam railway and walked the half mile or so back into town and over to the castle.

We spent quite a bit of time looking round the impressive ruins of Corfe Castle, sitting high on the hill over the surrounding countryside as a romantic ruin – deliberately destroyed on Oliver Cromwell’s orders following the English Civil War as it had been a royalist holdout.

From the castle we headed to the nearby Greyhound Inn where we have a very nice, and filling, lunch before a quick visit to the national trust shop and then wandered back over to the car park to pick up the car and head back into Bournemouth.

My friends dropped my off near my hotel before they headed home for dinner and then we met up again later in the evening for a couple of drinks.