Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door came highly recommend by Ian at work, so I've been trying to get down there for a while. This weekend had a "bank holiday Monday", and was in conjunction with a school mid term vacation, so I was warned that the motorways would be "queued up for miles", so it was with some trepidation that I decided to get up early Sunday morning and visit the beach, some 40 miles south. The weather was perfect.

This is the cove. Very nice, but the buildings and fishing boats clutter things up a bit. And the vantage points are such that you really can't get the whole thing in at one time, so an airplane a quarter mile away is the way to get that picture. There are lots of them posted on the web (search for Lulworth Cove on Google Earth), and it's truly impressive.

Here's a description of how the cove was formed.

This is the far wall. I'm a sucker for mossy rocks. Having seen about all I could see, especially with the sun in my eyes from the best vantage point I had access to, I set off for the Durdle Door arch, just around the corner, but about a 4km walk over a pretty tall hill.

This picture was taken on the way up the previously mentioned hill, on the trail to Durdle Door. This is the "big picture" of Lulworth cove and the small tourism village that's grown up nearby. It was still early, and the picture is into the sun, so things were pretty hazy still. The fields below and to the right are "overflow parking". I'm glad I came early!

Here are a few little blow holes similar to Durdle Door's arch, but on a much smaller scale.

Here's the view down in the little cove that's adjacent to the arch.

The gravel on this beach has been tumbled smooth by the tide. I love the looks of this.

See the point at the far left of this picture? I was standing there a few minutes later. Two pictures below this one is what it looked like standing on top of it, and it's looking back up towards where I took this one from.

Here's some moss growing on the rocks at the top of the rock surrounding the arch. I don't understand modern art, but I do understand this stuff. This kind of thing has every right to hang in art galleries, as far as I'm concerned, and you find it just about everywhere you go. No trip to England required...

This picture of the Durdle Door arch was definitely worth the drive, though!

When I walked down to the beach there was a pregnant couple alternating between passionate kissing and taking pictures of each other, so I intruded and volunteered to take a couple of pictures of them together in front of the arch. They reciprocated by taking this one of me.

Here's how Durdle Door was formed.

This "Sat Nav" is the best money I've spent since I've been here, other than the mountain bike. For about a hundred bucks (70 pounds) this thing eliminated my unfortunate tendancy to spiral off of roundabouts to parts unknown. Rather than getting to a roundabout on a highway and then accidently going right back where I came from, this thing tells me "take the second exit off the roundabout". Even I can count to two! It shows the current speed limit, and warns me when I get over 10 mph faster with "BEWARE", in a sweet British accent. It also warns about those radar cameras, as they are all programed in also. In complex "dual carriageway" and roundabout situations, it breaks it down to lanes and tells me which of the five or six lanes I should be in to make my exit. It's "a nice piece o' kit, mate!"

It amazes me how many opportunities there are to get out and get some exercise and fresh air in this country. A few weeks ago I was visiting an aviation buddy for the weekend, and he had at least 6 feet of travel books devoted to places around England. There was an entire series that devoted one book to each county, and then there were special ones for the big stuff like the Dorcet coast (above), Cornwall, and things like that. It's a gorgeous place, and I can see why the Brits would never tire of soaking more of it in whenever possible...

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