Luckily the weather forecast was right and although it wasn’t sunny at least the rain had passed through and it looked like it might brighten up, so after breakfast we set off on our walk around the northern part of the island and around Portland Castle, luckily the walk starts right by the hotel so after visiting the Olympic Rings to get a view of those without rain in the background then it was just a case of walking up the road to the car park and starting the walk. The whole of Portland seems to have been one big Quarry, after walking along the road for a while and just before the prison we turned off the road and walked down towards the sea along the old railway that was used to bring the quarried stone down to the port. The Merchants Railway was built in 1826 and by 1865 it carried 81,000 tonnes of Portland Stone from the quarries around Tout, Priory Corner and Castletown. The railway line that had two lines of trucks joined by a chain running over a drum at the top of the incline, the weight of the laden trucks descending drew the empty ones back up to the top of the railway where teams of horses were used to transport the stone to and from the trucks, obviously this has long gone but as we walked down the railway you could still make out where the line went as there was an indentation in the stone. At the bottom of the railway line we walked around the harbour to Portland Castle, which we had already booked tickets for so we went into the shop to pick up our audio guides then started walking round. This is an artillery fort constructed by Henry VIII between 1539 and 1541 as part of the defence programme to protect against invasion from France and the Roman Empire to defend the Portland Roads anchorage. The fan-shaped castle was built with a curved central tower and a gun battery flanked by two wings. Shortly after it’s construction it was armed with eleven artillery pieces intended for use against enemy shipping operating in partnership with its sister castle of Sandsfoot on the other side of the anchorage. During the English Civil War the castle was taken by the Royalist supporters of King Charles I and survived two sieges before finally surrendering to Parliament in 1646. It continued to be used as a fort until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 when it was converted into a private house. In 1869 the war office took over the fort once more but the castle was not rearmed instead it formed accommodation for the modern neighbouring fortifications. During the first and second World Wars it was used as offices, accommodation and an ordinance store. In 1949 the War office relinquished control and in 1955 it was opened to the public. Despite the variety of uses over the years it felt remarkably like a medieval castle inside, the only obvious difference being the windows which were no longer slits as they had been widened to bring in more light when used as a residence. After walking round the castle we continued with our walk up to Chesil Beach, this is Britains largest tombolo and is a lot higher than we expected apparently it is 12 metres at its highest and 160 metres wide. Apparently the pebbles can be graded by in size with the largest at this end the size of a man’s fist, while the ones at Bridport are no bigger than peas. It is said that traditionally a local fisherman could tell where he had landed even at night by the size of the pebbles on the beach. We walked along the beach for a bit then, once my ankles could take no more we headed to the breakwater and ‘flat’ ground! The rest of the walk is up a steep cliff though the quarry so we decided to call it a day and head over to Weymouth to Sandworld which is an annual sculpture festival which first opened in 2011 the sculptures are created over a period of between 5 days to 3 weeks and they bring 2,000 tonnes of sand for the sculptors to use. We walked round each of the displays the attention to detail is stunning, very much like the ice sculptures we see in Breckenridge. After looking at each of the walked back to Weymouth to get something to eat, we decided to go back the the pub we had been to on Friday, then it was just a case of catching the bus back to Portland for a relax before heading off to the bar this evening for our final night.
