London to Shanghai

We have arrived in Auckland and have 6 hours until our flight to Wellington.

It was a very stressful 24 hours until we had been PROCESSED at Shanghai Airport.

Got all organised at the hotel to do our online health declaration, filled out all the required fields and verified and submitted it. We had even arranged with the hotel to get a paper copy printed as a back-up. A QR code should have come back immediately. We waited, and we waited. We had to be at Heathrow 4 hours before departure so thought we could sort it out at the airport. The very unhelpful Virgin Atlantic desk staff said to try again and keep trying until departure. Did it about ten times using both our email addresses and on my laptop and phone. Nothing. Spoke with four different people all with a slightly different take on it. They said they would let us on the plane and email China Customs that we didn’t have the code. Another said because we were in transit and flying to New Zealand we did not need the code and that we would need to pick up our bags at Shanghai Airport.

Feeling discombobulated we boarded the plane. At Shanghai we passed through border control with e-passport, Barbara had her fingerprints taken, I was exempt being over 70, and had our photo taken and our temperature taken. Then went to the transfer desk where we got new boarding passes and were asked for our QR code which of course we didn’t have. Not a problem. A very nice lady took us aside did the application on our behalf on her phone which instantly came up with the codes. I photographed them onto my phone and we were taken to another border control area where they were scanned and we were all okay. About 30 people were on our Virgin flight from Heathrow and were transferring to Air NZ and we were not the only ones without a QR Code. This whole business is a Covid requirement and they are obviously well used to people not having the code. Didn’t have to collect and recheck our bags, and after another security screening we were released to the departure lounge.

PHEW!

Left Heathrow 45 minutes late and a 12 hour 18 minute flight to Shanghai OU Dong. The stop over should have been almost 5 hours but with the delay and very slow processing only 2 hours. Then 11 hours 30 minutes to Auckland. Both flights were pretty good, better than we expected. Even got some sleep for a few hours off and on. The food was good too. The coffee tasted good after UK coffee.

London

The hotel room was nice and cool and the air conditioning whisper quiet, so we both had a good night’s sleep last night. Today was a beautiful autumn day, sunny, warm, no wind, a nice last day in London for we may never come to this city again.

A walk across Hyde Park, through Kensington and Chelsea, across Chelsea Bridge to Battersea. Fortunately it was early and all the very upmarket clothes and jewellery shops in Kensington hadn’t opened yet, otherwise we may have been tempted to blow all the inheritance on a handbag or a suit. In Hyde Park you can buy ice cream from an immaculate Rolls Royce or a Morris J type van.

Our mission was the Battersea Power Station. This is in fact two coal powered power stations, the first built 1925 – 30 and the second to an identical design in 1937 – 41. Battersea “A” was decommissioned in 1975 and Battersea “B” in 1978. Over a million tons of South Welsh coal were consumed annually. The power station was heritage listed in 1980 and since then there were all sorts of proposals to use the building, including theme parks, offices, shops and restaurants. The building remained empty until 2014 while it fell into ruin. Ownership changed hands several times until in 2014 a Malaysian Consortium of property companies bought the building and started work on the redevelopment of the site.

The restored power station is the central focus of the regenerated site, housing a blend of shops, cafes, restaurants, art and leisure facilities, office space and residential accommodation, and a new riverside park. Full redevelopment was in eight main phases and included over 800 homes of varying sizes. The underground northern line was extended and the site now has its own tube station. Nearly forty years after it shut down the lights were switched on again as the Battersea Power Station opened its doors to the public in October 2022.

It is an amazing complex with the two huge turbine halls opened up and lined with retail and restaurants/cafes on several mezzanine levels. There is an elevator to the top of one of the four 109 metre chimneys, but at £50 we decide to give it a miss. So the Bankside Power Station is now the fabulous Tate Modern Gallery (see an earlier post) and the Battersea Power Station an upmarket shopping complex. Two buildings that were for decades considered ugly and a blot on the London landscape being given new lives and are now much used and loved.

We got caught out again trying to use “real” money at the power station. Much of the UK is becoming a cashless society. Several times when we have tried to buy coffee or a meal at cafes, restaurants and pubs we are kindly informed they don’t take cash, card only.

From Battersea we caught a tube one stop (but a long one) to South Kensington to go to one of my favourite places in London, The Victoria and Albert Museum and its café. In the cafe there are three beautifully designed period rooms by Gamble, Pointer and Morris dating from 1868. I did a post on these in 2019 so I won’t bore you by raving on about them again. We didn’t actually eat in any of the rooms, we ate lunch outside in the courtyard with the ornamental pool, under the trees enjoying the sunshine. We spent a couple of hours in the V and A but these museums are vast and overwhelming so we just picked a few things to look at. First some carved, painted and gilded wooden religious figures from the 1500s including one of St Barbara, then continuing the religious theme, gilded silver religious objects from the middle ages: chalices, crucifixes, communion plates etc. Then tapestries from the 14 and 1500s. Tapestries woven on a loom, not embroidered. A skilled person working from a full size template could do 1 square metre in a month and some were 40 square metres. King Henry VIII had a collection of 2700 tapestries. From tapestries to theatre and movie costumes from the last hundred years. A wide ranging collection from Fred Astair, the 60s rock band The Who, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dame Ena’s breakfast dress, Mick Jagger, Richard Burton and about 3500  others (only some on display). Finally we found a Turner painting of the Royal Yacht Club racing at the Isle of Wight – just because we came from there yesterday. We were now culturally overwhelmed so made our way back to the hotel via The Royal Albert Hall, The Albert Memorial and Hyde Park.

We are flying home via Shanghai and a couple of days ago we received an email from Virgin Atlantic advising us we are no longer required to take a PCR or antigen test within 48 hours of travel. Also that the wearing of masks is our own personal choice. We must complete a health declaration form from the China Customs Website no earlier than 24 hours before our arrival in China. We will be required to show the QR code we receive when we complete the Health Declaration form to Virgin Atlantic staff. So we will do all this before checking out of the hotel tomorrow morning.

Isle of Wight to London

Twenty minutes walk Dorset Hotel to Wightlink Terminal Ryde
Twenty minutes ferry Ryde to Portsmouth
Three hours walking around Portsmouth
Three hours thirty minutes South Western Railway Portsmouth to London Waterloo
Thirty minutes on tube London Waterloo/ Bond Street/Lancaster Gate
Five minutes walk tube station to Lancaster Gate Hotel

What a difference a day makes. From the peace and tranquillity of the Isle of Wight to the noise and frenziness of London via the historic port of Portsmouth. The ferry was a very quick pedestrian only catamaran to Portsmouth. The ferry arrives right at the railway station so you can step off the boat and on to the train in just a few metres. We had three hours to fill in so went to explore the Old Portsmouth. Portsmouth has many museums mainly relating to the sea, boats and the Royal Navy. There is Nelson’s HMS Victory, Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, The Royal Navy submarine museum, The National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, The D-Day Story, The Charles Dickins Birthplace Museum. In fact there are 85 museums and art galleries.

We were trundling our bags with us so it wasn’t really practical to go to most of the museums, as they had bag searches.  I would have liked to have visited the Victory and the Mary Rose but we didn’t have the time to do either of them justice. Instead we walked the Millenium Promenade which takes you round the historic Portsmouth waterfront including the Round Tower and the Square Tower.  The Round Tower was built about 1418 to defend the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour and prevent raids on the city by French ships. The Square tower was built in 1494 as part of the fortifications and served as a home to the Governor of Portsmouth and when he moved elsewhere it was a gunpowder store.

The waterfront also has the Spinnaker Tower, a 170 metre high observation tour with three observation levels. The tower reflects Portsmouth’s maritime history through its design and is named after a spinnaker, a type of sail that balloons outward. It was opened in 2005. From the tower you can do a freefall bungee jump into a crash net. Not for us. At the base of the tower and adjacent to the train/ferry/bus station is a huge new shopping centre, Gunwharf Quays, where we had lunch.

The train started out from Portsmouth as a five carriage train and was virtually empty. There were 16 stops and the train slowly filled up. At the half way point five more carriages were added and by Clapham Junction the train was packed. We were glad to get off at London Waterloo one of London’s large railway stations. We had been here in 2019 going to Kew Gardens so remembered the layout and how to get from the overground to the underground trains. It was a two tube line, six stop trip to Lancaster Gate and our hotel. Being a Sunday afternoon the tubes were also packed, and the usual noisy rattly swaying ride.

It was all a shock after Ryde and the Isle of Wight. Three weeks ago at the Lancaster Gate Hotel we had a nice enough room out the back at ground floor level, looking into a light well and with a very noisy air conditioning unit that switched on and off all day and night. We were hoping this time for a room on the front and at a higher level. No such luck. We are down a level in the basement with a lower view of the same light well. The air conditioner seems very quiet though.

One more day in London and then we start the long journey home.

Isle of Wight Day 2

We woke up this morning to probably the most perfect conditions on the whole trip. Min 9°, max 17°, no wind, no rain, bright sunshine. Ideal for a walk.

Our bus pass was good until 9.38am so we decided to use it to bus to Bembridge and walk back to Ryde. The buses ran at 40 min past the hour so the 9.40 was two minutes too late and we had to get the 8.40. Bembridge is the easternmost point of the island with quite a large tidal harbour. Getting off the bus there we walked about a kilometre inland to the Bembridge Mill. This is the only surviving mill on the Isle of Wight and was built in the early 1700s using local limestone. The weather side of the tower is faced with cement rendering. The whole wooden cap, complete with the windshaft, interior driving wheels, and the sweeps were turned to face into the wind. The mill was in continuous use until the 1890s grinding flour, bran and cattle feed. The mill ceased work in 1913 after which it decayed and became infested with deathwatch beetle. The mill was used as a cowshed and store until it was taken over by the Army and Home Guard in WWII and used as an observation post. In the 1950s it was gifted to the Island National Trust and restored.

From the mill we walked back down to Bembridge Harbour and joined the Coastal Path. Bembridge Harbour was empty of water, the tide being out and all the boats were sitting with their bottoms in the sand. There were many house boats some as large as a bungalow. It was from this harbour that Edward III set sail to invade Normandy in 1346, and it is said that this was the last port of call for Nelson and his crew en route to the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Part of the harbour was drained in 1358 creating mudflats and what is now a marshes nature reserve. There is a delightful stone causeway to walk across the mud flats. At the end of the causeway when you reach the coast again there is St Helen’s Old Church and the beach. The tower, that dates from 1220, is all that remains of a 13^th century church. The church ceased to be used in 1703 when the tower was bricked up and used as a sea mark. The derelict church became a source of Holy Stones which were taken by sailors to scrub down the decks of wooden ships.

At this point the path went inland around a golf course and holiday park, through some woodland and along quiet farm lanes. It was here we had our last blackberries for this holiday. We have feasted on them everyday but now their season has all but ended. What were large and juicy were now small, hard and shrivelled.

The path came back to the sea shore at Seagrove Bay and we stayed on the coast all the way back to Ryde, sometimes on a promenade and sometimes on the beaches. The beaches were beautiful, protected bays of golden sand, ideal for swimming. On the way into Ryde we came upon Appley Tower, a folly built in 1875 in the form of a Tudor Revival circular tower with battlements, a turret, an oriel window facing the sea and Gothic Revival tracery windows. The estate to which the folly belonged has long gone.

It was a wonderful 12 km walk, ideal conditions, plenty of interesting highlights along the way, mostly flat, just a nice casual way to fill in a Saturday. When we got back to Ryde we had deserved an ice cream. We had seen The Esplanade Ice Cream Parlour advertising “Unicorn” flavour and as our granddaughter Ellie has a special liking for Unicorns we had one of those. This evening we walked to the end of the pier where the ferries leave from. The pier is very long, it took ten minutes to walk its length, and carries, vehicles, pedestrians and a train. This is where we will leave from tomorrow.

So what do we think of the Isle of Wight? Having been here all of two days and seeing about 10% of the island we are of course experts. It is also autumn and the summer peak is over, people are back at work and students are back at school. We really liked it. Interesting and low key with lots of lovely beaches. It is a great place for walking and we have a guide with 24 coastal and countryside walks. Some say it is stuck in the 1950s and it does feel a little like that. It was a very popular holiday destination until the English discovered cheap holidays abroad and the popularity of the Isle of Wight declined. It does seem to have an older population of residents and visitors (like us). 90% of the people on the buses we used were our age. A large number of visitors are older people seeking peace and quiet, and traditional food and attractions. There is none of the buzz and energy of say Paignton and Torquay where the beaches were full of young people and the towns full of dance clubs. The transport system is great, there is lots to see and do and all the kitsch and junk of a lot of tourism is not shoved in your face all day.

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!

Songwriters: Alan Bergman / Marilyn Bergman / Michel Legrand

Isle of Wight Day 1

Today we played the typical tourists, After buying some lunch at Sainsbury Food we headed for the bus terminal on the Ryde Esplanade. We bought a 24 hr Rover + Breezer ticket. This allows you to ride any of the regular suburban buses any where on the island plus ride the 5 Breezer buses. The Breezers are open top hop on/hop off buses that do scenic circuits in particular areas of interest. For example the Needles Breezer starts in Yarmouth and takes in the Old and New Battery at the Needles among other sites in that area.

We first caught a regular bus to Newport. Newport is the largest town on the island and is located pretty much at the geographic centre. From there we caught a second bus that took us through many lovely villages to the south coast and along the wild coast westward to Alum Bay. Here there is a rather kitsch tourist “amusement park” with carousel, shooting gallery, cup and saucer ride, games arcade etc. Ignoring all that, there is a half hour walk out to the most westerly point on the island. Here there are two gun batteries. The New low down close to the end of the headland and the Old a little further back but much higher up. The attraction is the Needles Landmark, three white chalk stacks rising out of the water. At the end of the formation is a lighthouse built in 1859.

Alum Bay is also known for its multi-coloured sand cliffs. The sands are made of three minerals – quartz, felspar and mica, and in their pure state are white with other colours being produced through contamination by other minerals.

While we were at the Old Battery we could see rain coming from the mainland and within minutes it was very heavy. Lucky for us there was a Needles Breezer bus nearby which we jumped on but were still pretty wet. We didn’t get to see the New Battery. The Breezer took us on a scenic route to Yarmouth when we hopped off to look around. When we had planned to do this trip in 2020 we were booked into The Bugle Coaching Inn in Yarmouth so it was interesting to search it out. It is a charming old pub in the centre of the village. Unfortunately when we tried to book this time they did not seem to be doing accommodation.

Yarmouth is where we arrived on the ferry yesterday, it is beautiful small village with a huge marina and a castle built by Henry VIII in 1547, really a gun platform to protect the Solent in the event of an invasion of England by the French or Spanish. From Yarmouth another bus back to Newport and a bus that took us to the East of the island, Ventnor and Shanklin. At Shanklin Old Village we left the bus, went down to the sea and walked the Shaklin-Sandown Revetment. This is a 2 mile paved walkway between the two villages with golden sand beaches, brightly painted beach huts, great views out over the English Channel and plenty of outlets for food, drinks and ice creams. Sandown also has a pier.

At Sandown we got on yet another bus and went back to Ryde. Today we spent about five hours on busses, tomorrow it is time to do some walking. Our 24 hour ticket was issued at 9.38am today so first thing tomorrow we can take a bu, before 9.38, somewhere and walk back to the hotel. There is a Coastal Walk right around the island so will do some of that. The full circuit takes about 6 days, maybe an idea for another time.

Poole to Ryde

Walk to Poole Railway Station
Train Poole to Brockenhurst
Train Brockenhurst to Lymington Pier
Ferry Lymington Pier to Yarmouth, Isle of Wight
Bus Yarmouth to Newport
Bus Newport to Ryde
Walk to Dorset Hotel B & B

This was just one of those transition days. It is a little complicated getting from Poole to Ryde on the Isle of Wight on public transport but all the connections worked really well. The bonus was the fact that the train ride  from Brockenhurs tto Lymington Pier was free as no one came to collect our fare,

The Isle of Wight is the largest and second-most populous island in England –  after Portsea Island which has most of the city of Portsmouth on it. Referred to as “The Island” by residents, the Isle of Wight has resorts that have been popular holiday destinations since Victorian times and even of Queen Victoria her royal self.

We are now settled into our B & B and sorting out what we might do in the next two days. We don’t know much about the island so we will just have to go out and explore and find out. We had thought of hiring bicycles but I think we have run out of energy so will use their pretty good hop on/hop off tourist buses instead.

This is a sort of holiday within a hoilday for us. Just chilling out and relaxing.

My apopologies to The Beatles for for misquoting the name of their song.

Our room is on the top floor of a quaint three storey building and the wi-fi is non-existent up here. You have to go down to the ground floor lounge where it is pretty good. This had the advantage this morning of being able to talk with the former owner of the B and B and one of the staff. The lady owner, Theresa, has run the place for twenty years, with her husband until he died seven years ago. She is older than us, maybe approaching 80, and has recently sold to new owners. The new owners stopped providing breakfast. As of next Monday the place will be closed for 3 months and the new owners are gutting it and doing a complete makeover. The existing 6 rooms will turn into 10 and it will become a boutique hotel with no on-site staff. The lady was a bit sad about selling and a bit nervous about what to do with her days. Her family have been urging her to retire since her husband died.

For breakfast we went out onto the Quay and found a place with a good breakfast deal. A breakfast muffin (egg, cheese, sausage and bacon) and unlimited coffee refills for £4.00. The coffee was probably the best we have had in England so far. From there we walked around the Old Town down around The Quay which is the historic quarter of Poole. Lots of cruise and fishing trips are available from Poole. You can get a ferry to the Channel Islands and to France. Poole is the second largest natural harbour in the world after Sydney. It was an overcast and very windy day again so going out in a boat wasn’t very appealing.

We also checked out the route to the railway station and from which platform to get our train tomorrow. Moving day tomorrow: train Poole to Brockenhurst, train to Lymmington, ferry to Yarmouth, bus to Ryde.

In the afternoon the weather turned to custard, the strong winds continued and there was persistent rain. So glad we didn’t go out to Brownsea Island on a ferry to see the spiritual home of the scouting movement. The island was the location of an experimental camp in 1907 that led to the formation of the Scout movement the following year.  Eventually we retired to a cosy pub, The Poole Arms, for a celebratory “end of walk” glass of smooth Spanish red wine. It was very nice. There is something very, very comfortable about old English pubs.

One of the good things about walking the Coast path is that there are no mosquitoes, sand flies, flies or ants. The only pesky things are sandwich and chip stealing sea gulls. There are nettles and brambles though. Not such a problem for Barbara as she wore long walking trousers but in my shorts I had stinging legs on most days. The majority of the time the path is well trimmed but sometimes it is overgrown and you have to push your way through. The brambles I accepted because they provided a constant source of blackberries to eat as you went along. Barbara did get a thorn in her finger from picking blackberries and that hurt for a few days.

An update on the refund of our train ticket from London to Paignton. Because we had bought our tickets on line and chose the paper ticket option (not Q code or e-ticket) we had to go to a ticket machine and collect printed tickets. Then cut them in half vertically and scan or photograph them with a gap between the two halves to show they had been cut, and upload this to our refund application. The sensor on my camera was way too big so at first the jpeg would not be accepted, so I  had to resize it to a very small file size. Finally our refund application was accepted and we were told it would take up to 28 days to process and there may be a £10 administration fee. A further complication was that they were having problems with Mastercard and could we provide a UK bank account as back-up!! Just a day later we got an email to advise our claim was approved, there was no admin fee and a refund would be on my credit card in 7 days. Yippee!

Swanage to South Haven 12 km + 2km back tracking
Total kilometres walked 262.5, average per day 17.5
Ascension 150m  Accumulated ascension 6764m

So we have done the South West Coast Path. There is a real feeling of satisfaction in completing something we started in 2018. It is four years since our last long walk so I wasn’t sure how our bodies would stand up to the challenge this time. Doing a shorter daily average certainly helped us. The heat wave in the first week and the steep cliffs in the second made it hard work, but we survived each day, and every morning felt fresh and eager to get out on the path. When we reached the monument at the end today I wistfully thought well why not turn around and walk all the way back to Minehead. NOT! That would be a two month ordeal going against the prevailing weather and into winter.

Things didn’t start off so well today. Our guest house did not serve an English Breakfast just a sort of continental breakfast delivered to your room. A hang over from Covid we think. The breakfast was okay, packet of juice, make it yourself filter coffee, cereal, one fruit (banana) yoghurt and a bacon buttie. Then when we had checked out and were a kilometre into the day’s walk I remembered I had left my damp tramping towel and a pair of merino socks in the wardrobe to dry. So we back tracked to the guest house and of course the cleaner had found the items and left them with our bags – which fortunately had not yet been collected and moved on to Poole. So we started off again and on the way out of Swanage I took a few photos. At the top of the only climb of the day I realised I had not put the memory card back in the camera, so no pics of the first part of the day. Not an auspicious start.

Today was the easiest day of this trip. A walk out of Swanage on the promenade, one moderate climb, soft walking on grass, one of the Dorset’s natural wonders, a 3½ kilometre walk along a naturist beach, a free ferry ride and a bus ride into Poole. It was overcast all day but did not rain. The wind was very strong again, 45km/hr. Mostly behind us but also often a cross wind, thank God pushing us inland and not toward the cliff edge.

The highlight of the day would have to be the offshore stacks at Ballard Point and Old Harry Rocks. These are pretty impressive with sheer white chalk cliffs down into the sea. One of them is called Old Harry and the others are Old Harry’s Wives. Because of the strong wind we dared not go anywhere near close to the edge.

The beach at Studland Bay and then Shell Bay was empty and very peaceful with just some low waves breaking on the shore next to us. After the energetic roller coaster cliffs of the last two days this was a gentle unwind down to the end. The end of the 630 mile, 1003 kilometre South West Coast Path soon came at South Haven Point. A fairly low key blue metal monument alongside a line of cars waiting to get onto the ferry. Not nearly as impressive as the monument at the start in Minehead. In a way a bit of a let-down. We were on our own but in a few minutes an elderly couple came walking off the ferry and offered to take our photo.

The ferry is vehicle and pedestrian and is a chain ferry pulled back and forth across the 200m channel by two chains. The ferry runs every 20 minutes and each trip takes about 4 minutes. For pedestrians doing a return journey the fare is £1, for pedestrians just going one way – free. At Sandlands where we got off the ferry the Breezer 60 bus (£2) took us on a 40 minute trip to Poole Quay where our B & B is located in the old part of the town. At the B & B a minor let down to end the day. It is now just a B. The new owners no longer do breakfast. But that is okay, it will be nice to get out on the quay and find a nice little breakfast café, no need to hit the trail tomorrow.

Barbara’s thoughts.  Slow tourism has many advantages. You see different stuff but in bite size pieces. You get to talk to the locals. Walking is meditative. Being physically tired each day means you sleep very well. Walking the SWCP takes you away from the tourist hot spots, so no crowds. It is satisfying being on a journey from A to Z stopping at different places but moving in one direction. Your fellow walkers are just as knackered as you, and all support each other with kind words and helpful suggestions. There is a definite satisfaction in achieving something which at times is challenging or too hard, but you just keep going. You can eat lots of chocolate because you need the energy.

Tomorrow we have a relaxing day looking around Poole and then move on to the Isle of Wight for 3 days of R and R.

Kimmeridge Bay to Swanage 21km
Ascension 627m Accumulated ascension 6614m

It rained heavily in the night and we heard a few bursts of thunder. At breakfast (eggs Benedict for a change) it was still steady drizzle. Our taxi was due at 9.30am and I would have liked to look at the vintage steam train station. I didn’t want to be soaking wet before we had even started walking for the day so waited in the hotel. Our taxi arrived exactly on time and at Barbara’s request we were taken to Kimmeridge Bay not back to Clavell’s Café. This saved us about a mile of repeating a walk we did yesterday. It took twenty minutes in the taxi to get to the bay and when we arrived the drizzle had stopped and it was clearing quite nicely.

Our Stratford upon Avon friends were at breakfast this morning. They now have names -Jane and Brian. They have done most of the Coast Path, just some sections to go and do in Cornwall. They are staying at The Bankes Arms in Corfe for a few days, using it as a base and using a taxi to go out and walk different sections. Yesterday they walked what we walked today. They were able to warn us of the mud.

The path out of the bay climbed gently and once past Clavell Tower (a folly built in 1830, now expensive accommodation) it became narrow, wedged between a barbed wire fence on our left and brambles and the cliff edge on our right. The rain of yesterday and the overnight rain had turned the dirt path to black, squelchy, slippery, sticky mud. The fence and the brambles meant there was no escape. We have never seen such sticky mud. It quickly formed a thick layer under your shoe so you were about 25mm taller and it clung to the perimeter of your shoe so it looked like you were wearing black clown’s shoes. On the mown grass sections it picked up straw and grass to bind it all together. It was very slow walking and we had to stop often to prise the muck off with our walking poles. We had about 3 km of this before the path steepened and became steps or more rocky.

This morning there were three massive, very steep, hamstring hammering and calf creaking climbs. The first Houns Tout Cliff, then Emmetts Hill and finally St Aldhelm’s Head. These were as steep as any we have seen anywhere on the Coast Path but they did give great views up and down the coast. All morning there was a very strong wind blowing, thankfully from the west so a tail wind for us. On some of the head winds it became a cross wind and we could hardly stand up. Fortunately the cross wind was blowing us inland away from the cliff edge.

At the top of St Aldhelm’s Head there was a beautiful little 800 year old stone chapel, dedicated of course to St Aldhelm. From the outside it looked a simple square building with some buttresses and a pyramid roof. Inside the roof was in fact formed with elaborate interconnected stone arched vaults. Absolutely amazing for such a small chapel. It was as if the chief mason working on one of the great cathedrals, York or Lincoln, had come down to the coast on his holidays and done a little private job for the local congregation. Also at the top of this hill was a monument to radar research, some coast guard houses and a coastguard hut. It took us 3 hours to get to this point about 8kms. We were pretty tired so stopped for a rest and some lunch.

After lunch we still had 13km to go but the steep cliffs were over. It was much gentler on a grass path, although it did take another 4 hours. This section of the path had many old abandoned quarries, a lighthouse at Anvil Point, a castle and a Great Globe at Durlston Head. The Globe was made in 1891 from Portland Stone and is one of the largest stone spheres in the world. It seemed to take forever but we got into Swanage about 5pm and after some shopping we arrived at our guest house at 5.30pm, the latest we have finished any day on this trip.

Tomorrow is our last day on the South West Coast Path and we should complete all 1003 km of it. Not sure how we will feel about it, we will find out tomorrow.

Corfe Castle is the name of a village and is the site of a ruined castle of the same name. Burial grounds around the village suggest the area was occupied from 6000 BC with later Celtic and Roman occupation.

Corfe Castle has a church dedicated to St Edward King and Martyr. Edward, known as the martyr, was king of the English from 975 until he was murdered in 978 in Corfe. Edward was the eldest son of King Edgar but was not the acknowledged heir. Some supported him and others his half brother Æthelred. Civil war almost broke out until Edward’s reign came to an end with his murder. A number of lives of Edward were written in the centuries following his death in which he was portrayed as a martyr, generally seen as a victim of the Queen Dowager  Ælfthryth mother of Æthelred. He is today recognised as a saint in the Catholic Church,

The Corfe Castle fortification stands above the village and was built by William the Conqueror in the late 11^th century. It is one of the earliest castles built in stone (local Purbek stone) when castles were usually wood and earth. The castle remained a royal possession until Elizabeth I sold it and it eventually came into the Bankes family. They were the owners during the English Civil Wars in the 17^th century.  Ther Bankes were Royalists when the rest of Dorset was controlled by the Parliamentarians of Cromwell. The castle withstood two sieges but due to treachery was finally captured by the parliamentarians in1645.

In the same year Parliament voted to “slight” (destroy) the castle and it was blown up giving it its appearance of today.

Corfe is a very popular destination in Dorset. There is a vintage steam railway that runs between Swanage and Corfe Castle. It is a great day out to take the train from the seaside town of Swanage to Corfe Castle, spend the day there and get the train back.

We arrived in Corfe Castle about 4pm, tired, wet and muddy so went to the hotel to clean up. The castle closed at 5 so didn’t have time to visit and it opens at 10.30 in the morning when we will be long gone. Still you have to leave something not done as an excuse to come back.