Coastwalk , South West Coast Path

Chapman's Pool → Swanage

Distance: 9.60 miles
Ascent: 459 metres
Duration: 3 hours 48 minutes

Endure
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"How's the Great Walk going?" was a question I heard more than once at Greenbelt this year. It's an odd term to hear. This Coastwalk is just what I do, not some special endurance test.

John may be feeling the same way about his M62 walk so as an act of solidarity on his first day we're using the post-Greenbelt weekend to pick up again in Dorset.

From Chapman's Pool the walk immediately climbs 120 metres to the cliff-top before plunging to near sea level and rising steeply again on a seemingly never-ending staircase to St Alban's Head. It's a tough warm-up (did someone deny endurance?) with the remainder of the day being a far easier stroll on grass-topped cliffs.

Highlights included the twelfth century chapel of St Adhelm on that first headland, its thick walls deftly separating the sound of the sea from the silence of the vaulted room.

Further one curious sight followed another: the tidal swimming pool cut by quarrymen at Dancing Ledge; the quarries turned Victorian tourist attraction at Tilly Whim Caves; the stone signs at Durlston Country Park banning "hunting dogs and guns" followed finally by a huge concrete globe dedicated to all of God's creation. All hundreds of years old. All endured.