The South Coast Chronicles in an Autosleepers Broadway EB - Day six around Burton Bradstock and Abbotsbury in Dorset

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A day out around Burton Bradstock and Abbotsbury and an evening meal out at The rise at West Bay

Friday morning and we are collected promptly at 9.00am by our friends for a day out touring the local area. First stop is a quick drive through the village of Burton Bradstock and down to the beach and the Hive Café. We had seen the beach in the dark the previous night when the waves had been crashing onto the pebbles with huge force casting spray and fine salty mist high into the night time air.

Burton Bradstock

The village itself proves to be one of those small, attractive places with sixteenth and seventeenth century thatched cottages, two pubs and a couple of shops. Two and a half miles south east of Bridport itself, it lies in the Bride valley and was recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as the village of ‘Bridetone’ with 28 households.

We miss the Bronze Age burial chamber just south East of the church and we later regret not getting out and walking around. (We have since made a mental note to make sure when we are exploring in Bryony that we take the opportunity to travel more slowly. In rushing to see the highlights of an area we are in danger of missing out on some ‘hidden gems’).

A useful website about the village can be found at www.burtonbradstockvillage.org.

Burton Bradstock beach is the start of the might ‘Chesil Beach’ that stretches some twenty odd miles eastwards down to the Isle of Portland. Arriving rather early at the car park, we discover ‘The Hive Café’ hasn’t yet opened and so we miss out on a “sublime coffee experience” according to our friends. They wax lyrical about it and we made the decision to call back in later that day. “Excellent coffee, wonderful food, lovely staff” sums up their view. We gather that seafood and fish are the specialities, locally and ethically sourced. Apparently, there is also a beach shop that sells everything from dog biscuits to art work, posters and candles made by local artisans. With a large car park, not adverse to having motorhomes stay, it seems an ideal ‘stopping by’ location for motorhomers.

The Hive Cafe and neighbouring beach

We head off in search of Abbotsbury, a local village that has appeared in several films and which is truly at the heart of ‘Hardy Country’. The promise of old tithe barns, ancient chapels, lynchet stripped hillsides and remnants of old Benedictine Abbeys, was making one of the party very enthused and excited!

Despite the low cloud and murk (Mizzle we call it down our way in the West Country), the drive along the B 3157 gives tantalising glimpses of some striking coastal scenery. As we rise up to Beacon Knapp, we catch glimpses of Burton Mere and saline lakes at West Bexington. A luck break in the clouds reveals the full extent of Chesil Beach stretching away to the east, the dim silhouette of the flat-topped Isle of Portland just barely visible on the horizon. On a sunny day, this road would be spectacular although one or two of the lay-bys on the seaward side look a little dodgy. Evidence of slight subsidence and tarmac cracks, we muse about the wisdom of pulling a 3.5T motorhome into any of these!

Abbotsbury doesn’t disappoint. With barely anyone around, it is delightfully empty. Honey coloured stone thatched cottages line the narrow streets, with shops, galleries, cafes and tea rooms scattered throughout. The village lies in a valley in the Ridgeway hills and here you can see the effects of sheltered microclimates. Its walking country with plenty within an easy stroll.

St. Catherine's Chapel: copyright Dorset Scouser

So, we opt for the uphill walk, a ‘pilgrimage’ to ‘St Catherine’s Chapel’.

Built in the late fourteenth century, it is a small chapel with stout 4’ thick walls of buff coloured ‘Ashlar’ limestone. A stone tunnel vaulted roof supported by eight substantial transverse ribs, it’s a grade I listed building now looked after by English Heritage. St Catherine was the patron saint of spinsters and a chapel dedicated to her is very rare.

It has been a place of pilgrimage and of retreat for centuries for local Benedictine monks and rumour has it that the chapel is actually built on the site of an ancient pagan temple. It survived the dissolution of the monasteries, a hideous crime by the way, in the sixteenth century, probably because high on the hill, it was a local beacon and coastal seamark. The Benedictine monks came from the local Abbey down in the village which was dedicated to St Peter, founded by King Cnut’s retainer Orc and his wife Tola in the eleventh century.

The views are stunning, across rolling downs of chalk and limestone. To the east below swirling coastal mists and low cloud lies the start of the Chesil Fleet. The hilltop also proves highly exposed in the stormy windy conditions, where below, the sea is an angry grey seething mass of foam flecked storm waves pounding the shingle beach. We admire the chapel and then quickly retreat down the leeward slope in search of the tithe barn lying somewhere in the sheltered valley below.

The barn proves to be closed but the Abbey House close by prove not to be. A lovely old building with beautiful gardens, the welcome is warm and the coffee and cakes truly delicious. We are warm and revived, ready for a leisurely stroll back up to the village.

Later that evening, we all retreat to the wonderful Rise Restaurant back at West Bay for a thoroughly enjoyable evening meal in convivial surroundings.