Europe 2022 – Weymouth, England

By Kathleen Ennen / August 29, 2022

August 7, 2022

After a late arrival last night, we are getting settled in Anne’s flat in Weymouth. Details of our journey from Paris to Cherbourgh to take the ferry across the channel are in the previous post.

Unpacking, washing, grocery shopping, etc. We try to walk each day and also find taking a nap in the afternoon is a nice option now that our schedule isn’t so governed by travel.

August 10, 2022

We headed out to Bridport to see the weekday market day which wasn’t quite so impressive as 4 years ago. We hop in and out of a few shops and then drive the short distance to West Bay. We’d hoped to get some fresh seafood at a shop there but it was undergoing construction so that was a bit of a disappointment. We wandered around and found several of the cafés too busy for us to have lunch at. We ended up at a kiosk with fried crab cakes, calamari and shrimp. It was hot and good, but a full meal of batter fried food was a bit much. We decided an ice cream at Baboos was needed to help wash it all down. A really nice, salted caramel gelato was just the thing.

The drive to and from was beautiful – rolling hills and occasional glimpses of the English Channel in the distance. The landscape has some green but it’s mostly brown given the severe lack of rain. It’s been clear and dry for days and not terribly hot which is a nice change.

August 11-12, 2022

Nice long walks every day. Visited the Weymouth Beach with all its families stretched out under sun tents. The water was filled with people wading and lots a pedal boats, kayaks, and stand up paddle boards.

August 13, 2022

We’ve been back nearly a week and it’s been sunny, hot, and very dry. There’s a glimmer of a hope for rain on Monday.

Today we walked about 3 miles across the causeway to Portland. Chesil Beach looms up to our right as a very high embankment of rocks. It’s called a shingle beach and the stones are naturally graded with the large stones, 3”+/- each, to the smaller gravel to the west. Eventually in West Bay it’s mostly a sandy beach. It’s 18 miles long and is as high as 50 feet and 660 feet wide. It is so porous where the stones are large that there’s an elaborate drainage system on the landward side of the embankment to collect the water generated by high waves from storms that cause enough water to seep through and cause flooding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesil_Beach

We get to the end, near Chesil Cove, and stop at a small café for a beverage. We consult our feet and decide it’s best to catch the local bus back to Weymouth where the stop is at the top of our street.

August 16, 2022

While Anne is off for the afternoon, I walk down to the nearby car park where we spotted a large collection of wild blackberries the other day. It’s surprising the no one else, including the birds, are picking any. There are hundreds of ripe berries, many already rotting away, and many more red berries to ripen. I pick about 2 cups and walk back along the hillside overlooking Portland harbor.

I’m wondering about picking more and getting some pectin and sugar and making blackberry jam. We’ll see.

August 18-29, 2022

I eventually pick more berries several times, and lastly with the help of Anne. I make 2 small batches of blackberry jam. The first batch was better than the 2^nd, which was overcooked and very thick. I tried to thin it some by smashing it with boiling water. It might work, it might not!

We spent the last 10 days of my stay with long walks of several miles nearly every day as well as eating out a couple of times. The Fat Badger is a wonderful restaurant in the Wyke Regis part of Weymouth, overlooking the Fleet and Chesil Beach, or that is the, back side of it. We also went to Pascals for lunch, in Hope Square, and Rockfish along the sea/beach front in the downtown part of Weymouth. The food, or more specifically, the seafood is terrific in Weymouth!!

Yesterday, Sunday the 28^th, we drove out to Portland Bill. It’s a “head” as we know it in the states, jutting out into the channel. It’s somewhat like a small mountain that you climb up on switchback roads and is the source of Portland Stone with many years of quarrying. The view out at the edge is vast and we had fun scrabbling around on the big rocks to get to the edges close to the waves. It’s a very remote community probably 20-30 minutes from Weymouth.

Tomorrow, Monday August 29 is my departure day. Anne will drive me to Bournemouth for a 3+ hour train ride to Heathrow. I’ll wait there a while! I depart at 4:15 to JFK and the wait, with many delays, for the flight to Richmond. Initially I was to land around 11:20pm. Eventually I landed at 1:10am the next day…. Very tired!!! It was smart to book a hotel for such a late night.