Christchurch with Talking Pictures TV

Saturday 14 October 2023. We motored down to Dorset for a fascinating and enjoyable weekend with Talking Pictures TV at one of their fabulous Festivals of Film.

This was being held at the art deco cinema on Christchurch's High Street, The Regent Cinema.

We had a bit of a walk down into the town centre but there was still a while before the doors officially opened so we had a wander around to take in the centre of Christchurch.

It is well served with tea shops and cafeterias, both large chains and of the family owned variety. I do prefer the family owned shops really. Give someone a posh title such as barista and it seems to result in coffee taking ten times as long to make as it should really need. I never thought there was anything wrong with a spoon of instant coffee and hot water (or preferably hot milk) being poured over the granules.

The High Street again looking up towards the Regent which is well up on the left.

We took a side street turning, seeing a signpost that read "The Castle". It brought us to this thatched building and then, peeking from behind, a Norman castle on a high motte mound.

A set of steps led up to the somewhat scant remains. I didn't attmpt the steps, doddery old chap that I now seem to have become...

Walking past the mound brought us to another set of steps that were just as easy to ignore!

On a green opposite the castle and on the banks of a narrow offshoot of the River Avon were the remains of a Norman house. That must have impressed the locals a bit when it was first built!

And finally I'll get around to the TPTV event. It was quite simply fabulous. Our lovely friend Caroline Munro was unable to be there which was a disappointment but the equally lovely Madeline Smith stepped in to co-host the event with Mike Reid. I hadn't met up with Maddy since 2006 so quite a long while, but she took one look and said "Oh, I do remember you!" which was very nice, or as Miss Franny would say: Once seen, never forgotten... I've no idea what she meant... Good to see and speak to the TPTV regulars, Noel and Sarah Cronin, comedian Mel Byron and I got to chat and exchange a bit of banter with glamourous singer Lola Lamour which earned me a flurry of blown kisses from the stage towards the end of the event. Gratefully received Lola and the black eye Miss Franny gave me is already fading...

Weymouth and Maiden Castle

Thursday 22 Feb 1996. We left Poole and drove to Weymouth where the sun came out for a while to cheer us up.

By the time we got to Weymouth it was dinnertime and the town was surprisingly crowded. We even had to queue to park the car. The cafe we had visited on a previous visit was full and we ended up with a somewhat disappointing sandwich in a dockside pub that was crammed full to bursting.

Once twin towns of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, to either side of Weymouth Harbour, they were rivals for the use of the harbour to such an extent that Queen Elizabeth I got so tired of the steady streams of complaints and petitions by one against the other, she united them as a single borough through an Act of Parliament in 1571. Despite Melcombe Regis being the main centre, the new borough became known as Weymouth. In the 18th century the town was patronised by King George III. There is a statue of him in the town and at Osmington, four miles to the north east, is a chalk cut hill figure of the king riding a horse. Perhaps unfortunately for the town, it shows the king riding away from Weymouth.

The harbour was a major embarkation point for some half million Allied troops to board for the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in World War II. At the time we visited it was the port for ferry crossings to the Channel Isles.

Havelet is a roll-on roll-off car ferry. She started life as the Cornouailles with Brittany Ferries in 1977 and later transferred to British Channel Islands Ferries as Havelet operating for them between 1989 and 2000 between Weymouth (later Poole) and the Channel Islands. A bit unstable, she had aft sponsons added in 1990 at which time her rear deck was extended towards the stern, making a longer ship. In 1992 travelling out of Cork and bound for Roscoff in Brittany, she was struck by a large wave and in danger of sinking, but managed to right herself and return to Cork for repairs and reports. The only damage found was to the cars she was carrying. In 1994 she transferred to Condor travelling between Weymouth and the Channel Islands in which role she is pictured. Subsequently she was sold to Prekookeanska Plovidbla, the parent company of Montenegro Lines in 2000 and operated between Bar and Bari being renamed Sveti Stefan before being scrapped in 2013.

The sunshine was somewhat illusory - the cold drove us back to the car and the car drove us seven miles to a hill just outside the county town of Dorchester. Maiden Castle is one of the largest and certainly one of the most impressive iron age hill forts in England. Despite a complex system of zig-zag paths that attackers had to negotiate to reach the gates whilst the defenders threw all sorts of nasties at them, the Romans succeeded in storming the place after bombarding it with rocks with their siege engines.

It was windy and bitterly cold. Miss Franny opted to stay in the car whilst I trudged uphill, bent almost double against the wind and cold. I found the ramparts guarded now as they would have been when the fort was still inhabited - by companies of highly trained 'battle sheep', more commonly known as 'battering rams'.

Get back in the car you silly old fool! Hey - less of the old. I was only a silly middle aged fool then...

Return to England South Coast, 1996 Index Page

Devon and Dorset Break, 23-26 June 2014

A series of articles covering a short break in Devon and Dorset, taking in Sidmouth and Seaton, Beer, Lyme Regis, Wareham, Weymouth and the Cerne Abbas Giant.

Click the menu photos below to access the associated article and photographs.

Return to Holidays in the UK Index Page

Wareham and the River Frome

Wednesday 25 June. From Lyme Regis we motored quite a way. Past the huge ramparts of Maiden Castle. Out towards the great natural harbour of Poole. But we stopped a little short of Poole at Wareham.

This ancient village sits on the River Frome which flows down to Poole Harbour. It was probably one of King Alfred's burghs and is one of just a very few walled towns in England where the walls are earthwork rather than stone. King Alfred (he of "the Great" and of the burnt cakes) was desperately trying to keep Saxon England er... Saxon England...

This is a view of Wareham as it would be seen by those trying to stop King Alfred from keeping it Saxon England. The Vikings. Vikings is a bit of a misunderstood term these days. A lot of people think that was the name of the people from Norway, Denmark and all points cold. It wasn't. They were Norsemen. And presumably Norsewomen... Vikings were raiders. It's what they did rather than who they were. But then those who went sailing off for a spot of raping and pillaging and looting without (here's the defining crunch) settling became known as Vikings. It probably started out as a misunderstood answer to the question:

"Hello, nice boat... what do you want?"
"We're viking!"

Anyway, Vikings began to refer to the people. They were eventually followed by Norsemen who wanted to settle. You know... no ice, lots of grass and good farmland, internationally famous benefits system...

The Norsemen also settled in Germany and what would become France where their name Norsemen became shortened to Norman and then they invaded all over again. What goes around comes around...

We were on the river on this little whaler. There actually are not all that many whales splashing up and down the River Frome, so instead of watching them we sat looking at the reeds that line the river. They were harvested for thatched roofing until there was a great fire one year. The decision was made that all rebuilding should be done with tiled roofs so to reduce the risk of fire spreading so quickly again. That had two effects.

The only thatched roofs to be seen now are outside the area devastated in the fire. And two: the reeds started to choke the river which silted up and is now unnavigable to large boats except for a short length. Stops any Vikings in their tracks now...

An old Viking longboat sitting abandoned in the river...

This is the spot from which we got on the boat. It is a lovely spot on a warm sunny day with a couple of pubs and benches. We sat and watched the boat load up again for its last trip of the day. We decided we would have a bit of a wander to look at the church and old part of the town.

We obviously wandered outside the area of the fire! This gorgeous little cottage sits facing the churchyard, with upper storey windows right up in the thatch.

It was immensely hot. We glanced, rather than looked at, the church. We admired the old blocked doorway, designed to ensure you bowed your head humbly before entering the House of God and decided we would head back to the river and find a drink.

Which we did! Cheers!

Devon & Dorset 2014 Index

Lyme Regis

Wednesday 25 June. We decided that today we would move the car and set out to leave Devon by the back door and ventured into Dorset, the next county along, coming into the town of Lyme Regis.

I remember fondly in the past, you parked your car in a car park and then when ready to leave you paid an attendant who calculated what you had to pay by how long you had been parked. These days no one is willing to employ people to do this when machines can do the job. But unfortunately they don't seem able to do exactly the same job so you have to decide before leaving the car how long you want to stay and pay up front. Most people err on the safe side and car parks get extortionate amounts from people who then find they have exhausted a place of all they want to see and leave before their due time.

We parked in an NCP car park which ended up costing eight pounds for two and a quarter hours. The fee covered a parking duration of between two and four hours so we did not pay for time that we didn't eat into a bit but even so... I'm sure you could park in central London cheaper than that!

Lyme was a Saxon town, mentioned in the Domesday book by the Normans and given its charter by King Edward I in 1284 at which point the word Regis was tagged onto the town's name.

We found this enticing display opposite a typical south coast pebble beach and I wondered about the shop owners' sanity until we found that further along on a corner of beach before the harbour there was a wonderful sandy swathe of beach. Maybe it was imported, maybe it's always been there, I'm not sure.

Buckets and spades were always metal when I was a lad. Spades hurt when you dug one into your toe by mistake...

The Cobb is Lyme's harbour. Famous for being the main lookout for The French Lieutenant's Woman and also mentioned in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, it is Lyme's most literary spot.

The film with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons was partly filmed in Lyme. That is indeed the Cobb harbour wall that features on the poster.

Looking from our spot closer to the harbour back towards the east we can see the blue cliffs of this bit of the Jurassic Coast in the distance. They are the Blue Lias cliffs, richly deposited with fossils of early dinosaurs and sea creatures with both ammonites, the large spiral shelled icky-looking creature and bits of the pleasingly ferocious-looking ichthyosaur, a sort of reptilian shark being found in seemingly abundance.

The ammonites in particular are so well represented that even numpties like me can find them lying on the beach, though you have to be a bit luckier to find one that hasn't been weathered to mere coloured lines on a stone! The town's lampposts incorporate the ammonite shell structure.

We sat on the corner of the sandy beach on a picnic bench provided outside Jane's Cafe and had a morning coffee. The cruet set made me wonder just how many portions of fish and chips must be eaten by the seaside every day? Answer: none - they are all eaten by people... Sorry - a momentary lapse...

Whilst we sat peacefully listening to the dog on the next table which clearly wanted to rip out the throat of the well-behaved dog at the table opposite, a class of school children walked in a long line to the sandy beach and deposited backpacks on the sand by the low wall. Then at a word from the teacher a mighty cheer split the air and they charged out onto the sand in small groups of friends in a brief frenzy of uncoordinated activity before the drawing boards and pencils came out for a more formal (if just as much fun) lesson.

We blanched a little at the mountain of salt and pepper that was emptied onto a plate of beans on toast at the next table. Yeuch!!! Half the pots emptied! But it wasn't quite to the taste of the perpetrator, for after a single mouthful, she reached for the pots again and emptied the other half... Happy heart attack... Surely the only thing you need to apply to baked beans is heat? Each to their own!

After our coffee and a walk around the Cobb area, we walked back along the seafront to the town. We had a look in the Lyme Fossil Shop. They had some wonderful examples of fossils and crystals with a full ichthyosaur fossil in a display case in a little grotto of a room reached by a short staircase.

This is Lyme Regis's Guildhall. Dating back to Stuart times it is built on the site of the town's lockup. Close to the seafront it can be hired for weddings, holding up to 50 guests according to the Lyme Regis website, 75 guests according to the Dorset For You website. Perhaps the extra 25 have to be capable of sitting on knees?

The theatre sadly had no performances whilst we were there. What do plate spinners, jugglers and ventriloquists do with their time these days, I wonder?

There's a little seating area with a couple of bench seats and an old cannon pointing out to sea on a high viewpoint at the foot of the hill. I had a sit down to watch the comings and goings whilst Fran went into a couple of clothes shops and craft type shops nearby. I'd have only got in the way or knocked something over... Safer to sit and watch the world go by.

Devon & Dorset 2014 Index

The Lyme Regis Gruntodon

Sunday 8 August 1993. We were in Lyme Regis, leaning over the sea wall to see if the tide had gone out far enough for us to walk round to the fossil beach to search for the fossilised remains of the legendary ellipigerossacow.

Note Dad's left knee which, amazed at being in shorts and seeing daylight, is talking excitedly to his other knee! Alas, the tide was in, so the fossil hunting had to wait until we had had a look round the town.

We found some shops filled with spectacular fossil finds to give us an appetite for bashing away at a few rocks!

Then the tide - or most of it - went out and we set off, clambering over the breakwaters and falling into deep rock pools that the tide forgot to take with it...

We were heading for the dark bit of cliff at the left of this photo. By now we were all knackered and the tide had gone out far enough for us to walk round instead of climbing over the breakwaters. [puff!] [pant!] Thank you tide...

Signs warned that the cliffs are dangerous and liable to fall at any time. It didn't seem to be worrying people all around who were smashing away at them with geologists' hammers. We hadn't come scientifically equipped and instead rooted around at the masses of already fallen rock that make up the beach. Every now and then there came a shout and the sound of sliding rock and once or twice chunks bounced off the back of some twit who was trying to tunnel into the wall with all his might... There were lots of fossils to be found actually, but most had been there long enough for the tide to smooth the detail away a bit. I did find a quite large chunk of rock that quite obviously had a bone running through it, but it was far too large to attempt to smuggle off the beach and too heavy to carry anyway!

And then we came across this huge chunk of rock with the fine, though badly sea-worn fossils. Logic pointed to two ammonites that had died quite close to each other - perhaps they were sweethearts or related or something? But of course there is the tantalising possibility that they were the nostrils of the huge Gruntodon, all straight hair and curly teeth, that in the old stories does not get a single mention at all... I got Dad to sit near them to show the size and another rare glimpse of his knees...

And then of course we had to walk all the way back, but at least it was in sunshine this time. We were still wildly optimistic and picking up odd bits of rock. I found a rare blue piece with jagged edges. I could just make out the primitive brand that some caveman had etched onto the neck of this once-beautiful creature. It said "venir of Babbaco..."

But I did find a genuine fossil. It was a small ammonite. Very small and somewhat broken. In fact it could have been a snail... But it was pocket sized and could be brought home and still to this day (at time of re-writing this article, it's April 2023) it makes up a small part of my fossil collection. Well, I mean the fossil is small. It makes up 100% of my entire fossil collection... By heck! And it's only Sunday! How can this holiday top that?!? Oh... it can... it can...

Return to Sidmouth and Devon Holiday 1993 Index Page