Friday (the second day of my whistle stop trip to Dorset) I woke early feeling a bit damp and chilly. No rain overnight but the greenery was sopping wet with dew. I brewed coffee, packed my tent and headed to the bus stop in the nearby village of Uplyme. 

 The X53 between Axminster and Weymouth is a handy service to hop on and off at various points along the coast. My first stop was Swyre, a hamlet at crossroads where we used to go on holiday when I was a child. I stood on top of a wartime pill box looking out to sea. I've stood at that spot every now and then for most of my life. It still thrills me.  

 Then I walked a mile or so inland to the village of Punknowle, specifically the Crown Inn where I stopped for a pint. I suppose Dorset is the place where I first engaged with the English landscape. England - and indeed our dis-United Kingdom- is full of landscapes but for me Dorset is the primal landscape.

 I suppose I think fondly of an older, more dilapidated Dorset. In good and bad ways the county has become considerably more affluent in recent times. But a falling down shed is so much more interesting than a luxury house.

 Then I walked back to the coast road and caught another X53 to Abbotsbury. Surely one of the most scenic routes in Britain and the top deck of a double decker the ideal way to see it.

 Abbotsbury is overlooked by a chapel on a hill.

 From one side of the chapel you look back towards the village and beyond. Abbotsbury Plains is an undulating landscape of lynchets, lime kilns, stone circles, long barrows and other mysterious traces of ancient Albion.

 From the other side of the chapel you look towards the Isle of Portland and the Chesil Beach, that long strand of shingle that separates the Fleet Lagoon from the sea.

 I rounded off my afternoon in Abbotsbury by walking down to the beach and gazing across Lyme Bay in the direction of Lyme Regis. In fact this view looks directly down the Jurassic Coast to the spot in yesterday's post where I photographed the coastline.

 Then I caught my third bus of the day to Weymouth which still has the flavour of a cheery/gaudy seaside resort. I strolled along the promenade but I didn't have my bucket and spade with me so I headed for the station. I got the train back to London reflecting on my brief sojourn in Dorset for the first time in four years. I won't leave it so long until my next visit.