Walking in Dorset

Hardy’s Monument and the Hell Stone – 2 miles

A short break in Dorset as the snow fell

Not all my blogs will be on local walks as it doesn’t matter where I go, I’m going to explore. I thought you might enjoy reading these walks as well, they may be local to you or something to try out when you are in the area.

I used to live in Dorset but never explored the area I was visiting so I wanted to go see some of the places I’d never been too and the first on that list was Hardy’s Monument.

The snow and ice was sporadic, hitting different sections of the county so we weren’t letting it stop us from exploring.

As I drove to the monument, we headed up a steep hill and quite frankly I don’t know how I made it to the top. Halfway up, we skidded on ice and then very gingerly crept to the top. Driving a large van on ice was suddenly not fun. Is it ever? And I sure as hell didn’t want to reverse back down the road. One of those single width roads with high hedges on each side.

We pulled into the carpark and then both agreed we weren’t leaving until the sun came up and melted the ice on that road. So a quick visit to the monument was about to become a walk. I opened the OS app on my phone and had a look at local routes. As it happens this area is riddled with them and even the South Dorset Ridgeway ran nearby. The OS app is fabulous and I spotted something called the Hell Stone nearby, so off we went.

From the monument we walked down through the trees and snow to land on the Ridgeway and then turned right in search of the Hell Stone. It was a lovely walk, relatively easy over two miles, the snow was only in places and the ice wasn’t too bad. We had great view looking over Chesil Beach in the distance and explored the Hell Stone. Happily, we didn’t encounter the Dorset Ooser, a folkloric figure that scolds women. He and I may have had words. The sky was blue, the sun had risen a little bit and we decided that the road had hopefully thawed.

It had, in places, and we inched our way down praying that we didn’t meet anyone, and headed off to Charmouth to search for fossils. Which we did! Ammonite and trilobite!!

Given the weather, this was our longest walk but we still managed to explore the Jurassic Coast, Lyme Regis, Cerne Abbas, Portland Bill and Montacute House.

Dorset Rocks!