and not forgetting Lyme Regis

I forgot to mention Lyme Regis.  I don't think that was an instance of Freudian repression, since I liked the place perfectly well.  Rather, it's what happens when you take a few days off instead of blogging each evening, or at least writing about what you did the following day.  We tagged the trip to Lyme Regis on to the visit to Mapperton, as we were already on the right side of Dorchester and the Systems Administrator who had never been there wanted to see it.

I had been to Lyme Regis, ages and ages ago, and seen The French Lieutenant's Woman, also a long time ago, and Lyme Regis was not quite as I visualised it.  The front is quite strung out along the coast, and I'd imagined the harbour with its famous cobb more overhung by the town than it is.  It was a windy afternoon, and we only walked along the first third of the cobb because waves were breaking over the top further along, not hard enough to look especially dangerous, but wetly enough to soak our trousers and stain my new raincoat with salt.  I'd have liked to go the full Meryl Streep hog and stand mournfully about at the end, but after years of sailing I know what to expect from a bucket of salt water down the back of the neck.  Later on in a shop window we saw a photo of what the cobb looks like in a real onshore gale, and it is terrifying.

We didn't bother with the museum, judging from the outside that it dealt mainly with the town's literary associations.  I've read both books, and seen the film of the John Fowles book and the TV adaptation of Persuasion, and the SA wasn't that fussed.  Instead we walked along the sea front, admiring the play of light on the cliffs to the east and the rainbow as a large shower passed by, narrowly missing us.  Looking at the buildings I felt as though I were only forty or so miles from east Devon where I grew up.  There's a lot of white painted plaster, black painted window surrounds, and the overall jizz of the houses and pubs reminded me of my childhood home.  We noticed through the week as we drove around Dorset how much the landscape changed in only twenty or thirty miles.  Around Swanage it is intensely green, with little fields predominantly laid to pasture, while back at Blandford Forum there was much more ploughing, the earth throwing up white lumps of chalk or flint.

We broke our journey home at Braintree, having told Mr Smith we'd arrive in the early afternoon and not wanting to get back in the middle of his lunch or while he was still packing his car.  The SA had never seen the Cressing Temple tithe barns.  I had, but was happy to see them again, and besides they have a tea room.  The barns are absolutely magnificent, built in the thirteenth century by the Knights Templar, and some of the largest and best preserved in the country.  The tea room is pretty nice as well, run by Wilkin and Son, the jam makers of Tiptree, so we had one final cream tea as we were still on holiday, and walked around the recreated Mediaeval garden.

If either of us had been keener on shopping we could have stopped at Braintree Freeport instead. As it is my souvenirs from the entire week's holiday amount to one fir cone, picked up at Athelhampton, two cuttle fish from the beach at Durdle Door, three stones with holes in spotted in the National Trust car park at Kingston Lacy, a second hand paperback book about railway navvies which set me back fifty pence at the Swanage railway, a seedling of Corsican violet rescued from drowning in a tray of water outside the Blandford Forum museum (which was shut, all plants fifty pence, please put money through the letter box), and a copy of the Mapperton garden guide plus a rooted cutting of geranium 'Joy'.  It was a good holiday.