Corfe Castle - from the Purbeck Way

Wednesday 16th July

My week of using the weekly bus ticket that I bought for myself as my birthday present continues -

First bus to Bournemouth and the wait for the Swanage bus went on - and on and on -

almost an hour. Almost all those who had queued had either given up or gone somewhere else and I don't blame them!

Though I had had got to Swanage the day before, see the Blip of the lovely Edwardian Pier - the Sandbanks ferry had broken down since. It runs on a chain-link system and the chain had given up. Pulling all those double decker buses across no doubt had finally taken its deadly toll!

Thus, this was the only, LONG way round - via Poole and Wareham. Quick thinking, I knew that the route had to go via Corfe and its unique and enigmatic castle ruins.

View LARGE

I had gone to Corfe Castle once before, with my friend Des, we drove there in about 2005-6? Before digital anyway - and so I had been itching to go back for a while. But with the usual 2.5 hours by bus when the ferry is running, I reckoned that I finally spent over 7 hours waiting for or travelling by bus-es. About 7 changes, in all!

Corfe itself gets horribly choked up with traffic, it's pretty, it's winding and narrow and when it fills up with tourists, it's hell, albeit a pretty one!

Getting to the Castle shortly after ten a.m. and a modest £7.95 entrance - it's National Trust, if you are a NT member - see Official NT website and the visitors were sparse at that time and so I managed my wide angle photos first. But it had gone cloudy. Then, it soon filled up - but it was good to see young families enjoying themselves. There's tons of places to run and hide and pretend you have a sword - if you are seven! By midday, it was heaving.

But for adults too there's loads of levels and quite daring slopes and viewpoints, considering we now live in this molliecoddled Health and Safety age. Well worth the entrance, I was there for 3 hours and there were archaeological demonstrations in the lower area too. You get great views from the top too, though a better day would have helped.

But in all, considering this was peak season, I got away with fairly uncluttered photos but choosing one to Blip was a problem.

In the end, I had emailed one taken in the same place to this to Des and just liked how the sun was peeking through and you do get a much nicer outline from a few hundred yards, rather than from directly underneath. Quite a lot of editing gone into this, always erring on the side of subtle, but aiming to inject some life and passion into it.

I then followed the Purbeck Way to Wareham. Signed up as 7 miles, it seemed further. Lots of skirting fallen trees, walking on roads but also interspersed with some of Dorset's natural heathlands, I was well up for a pub meal and sit down in Wareham.

Lovely town, which I had never stopped in before, just passed through. The bit by the river is picturesque and gorgeous.

Checking bus times, I worked out that to play safe, I had only 40 minutes in Wareham. I would have to get the bus to Poole, then another to Bournemouth, in time for the last change and bus home back to Salisbury. So, no pub meal, just horrible chips, but overall, a lovely, (long) fruitful day.

Lens is Nikkor 16-85mm