The weather had changed this morning and it looked quite overcast when we went up to breakfast, but that didn’t deter us, we were scheduled to visit Lulworth Cove this morning then go round to Lulworth castle in the afternoon. It was a good decision to go to the cove first as it wasn’t raining much when we arrived but it got heaver later in the day. We got to the car park before it became too full and we started following the trail I had found, this should have been a two mile circular walk which took in both the cove and the fossil forest, it started off ok, we walked through the car park and picked up the south west coast trail to the viewpoint above Stair Hole, this gave a great view of the sedimentary rock from here we followed the path down to the cove and walked along the beach to the other side, well I call it a beach it was just shingle and the tide was in so there definitely wasn’t any beach to see. We should have been able to find a wooden ladder to walk up the other side, but it has either rotted away or been replaced with a combination of stone and rock steps, after a bit of scrambling we managed to make it to the top and to Pelpers Point, where there is a stone memorial to Sir George Pelper who was a town planner with a passion for landscapes and was responsible for the principles of the green belt in the importance of town planning. He was a tenant of Little Bindown for fifty years and had a valuable role in post war Britton where a lot of postwar housing and physical construction took place. We picked up the south west path again, it was then just a case of walking along the ridge to the ranges and the steps down to the Fossil Forrest. This is actually on an Army firing range so can only be visited when they are not firing which tends to be at weekends. It is 97 steps down to the beach where a number of fossilised trees had been found but unfortunately they have all been removed so all that remain are the bowl shapes left when the trunks rotted away leaving hard calcareous tufa, you can see the ripple marks of an ancient sea floor and fossilised alga mats. After having a look round we climbed back up the stairs and continued the walk. We dropped down the side of the firing range where there is a little building that looked like a chapel but probably wasn’t as the last chapel on the site was built in 1149, apparently Cistercian monks built the chapel in Little Bindon but they only stayed a few years before moving to Bindon Abbey, Wool in 1172. The route map basically just said “Follow the path running next to the fence across Bindon Hill and cross the second stile on the left to descend back to Lulworth Cove car park, the only problem was that we didn’t see one style let alone two, by the time we were level with the car park we decided we probably needed to start heading down or we would end up walking along the ridge line all the way to Durdle Door so when we next saw what looked like a footpath we took it. Unfortunately it wasn’t the footpath we were looking for or possibly even a footpath at all! But we persevered and eventually we could see the back of peoples gardens, just about when we thought we might have to jump over a garden wall and knock on someone’s door to ask to be let through their house we saw what might have been a path down. As it turned out it wasn’t actually a path, but after some scrambling we finally made it to the entrance of the Lulworth activity centre so it was just a case of walking through the pub beer garden and we could get back on to the road! It was defiantly an experience and we were both very grateful that Chris had his walking sticks with him as they were very useful. We walked back to the car and had the sandwiches we had brought the other day then we drove round to Lulworth castle. It was raining a bit harder by this time but that didn’t really matter as we only planned to visit the castle which would be inside. It didn’t seem very busy which made sense once we had a look round as although it is in fantastic condition outside, it is actually a ruin on the inside. Built between 1608 and 1610 to complement Thomas Howard’s Manor House at Bindon Abbey, Humphrey Weld brought the castle in 1641. He didn’t have it long before the Civil War erupted in England during which time the Manor House at Wool was destroyed and the Estate sequestrated by the Parliamentarians, after the Civil war Weld refurbished the Castle’s interior as it was now the main family home. Over the years the Castle had various uses but it all came to an end in 1929 when a devastating fire gutted the Castle, the fire brigade actually ran out of water and although the fire had died down it reignited the following day finishing off the job! The pictures on the website are from before the fire when it was quite spectacular, unfortunately now it is just an empty shell with some rather strange features such as fireplaces 2/3rds of the way up the wall where the second or even third floor once was. We walked round each of the rooms then decided to have a hot chocolate and scone and jam to try and warm up, this was probably the nicest hot chocolate we have had so far this holiday and definitely did the trick, so we walked back to the car and set off to the hotel where we turned the fan on to warm up, have a bit of a relax before heading up to the bar for a drink.
