South Coast Summer 07

With a crazy summer of sporting exploits and weddings and weekend activities such as watching the Tour de France and various festivals - I'd hardly got away at all, so with Theresa being on school holidays we took the opportunity to explore some of the Southern Coast of the island that we live on. It meant that I would miss the final of the touch competion and only my second game in 6 seasons, but it was the only weekend available so we made some vague plans and began putting them into action in late August in time for the bank holiday weekend.

After work on Wednesday night I caught a train from Waterloo down to Southampton where I met Theresa who had popped over to the Isle of Wight for some windsurfing and horse riding. The ride down was smooth and relaxing and I found the B&B we'd booked without any problems. The next day we picked up our rental car tootled on through the New Forest towards Poole.

After driving around Bournemouth we decided to continue on and arrived in Poole around midday. We managed to book into a camping ground, but being the height of summer nothing was available close to town and we ended up in Blandford Forum, about 15 miles North. After getting a coffee we snuck out to the windsurfing beach and got ourselves sorted with some kit. The estuary is very shallow and its a decent trek with your rig out to where its deep enough to sail, but it was nice to finally get going. The wind was a little gusty, and light - but we managed to get up and away and although I was on a 180 cm2 board with a 5 m2 sail I was managing to keep up for a bit despite having 1m2 less sail area and nearly 40cm2 displacement more on my board, and even got up planing a couple of times - then Theresa broke the Universal Joint on her mast, and had to wait for one to be brought out from the shop.

After that, the wind got up quite nicely and Theresa flew across the water at 1000 miles a hour whilst I plodded along in her wake for the next hour. I also used a harness for the first time and boy does it make a difference!! So much less effort required in holding onto the boom.. though I got catapulted more than a couple of times and thrown about two or three metres the times that I wasnt still hooked in!!

Anyway after that we made plans to return the next day and when we did it was dead calm for the next day as we willed the wind to start up. Instead we played frisbee on the nicest beach Ive seen in the UK and chilled out - watching the calm from the shore. It was possibly a blessing in disguse, as I was having trouble holding onto the steering wheel of the car after the previous days exertions!

The next day we meandered west along the coast stopping at Charmouth where we found a nice camping ground close to the sea and after spending three pounds each on an icecream, we went for a walk along the coast up a couple of the big limestone cliffs there. It was a hot day and after such a busy time during the day we went out into Charmouth after a rest, where we explored the one-pub-town's nightlife chatting at length to a couple from Bristol.

On the following day we went for a drive up to Cerne Abbas where there is a great big giant carved into the hillside (much like the horse near Bath) but the most striking thing about this fellow is that he has a very prominant and large willy - and stopped at a pub along the way. We then continued along and explored Dorchester and the entirely closed Bridport. The weather over the whole time was fantastic and they estimated that there were 98,000 on Bournemouth beach on the Saturday of the weekend.

More soon..