Saturday: A Trip to the Seaside

For the last twenty years our favourite location for a UK family holiday has been Weymouth in Dorset, staying on a caravan park near the sea at Bowleaze Cove. The park is not part of a chain and is very well run, and over the years we have watched it improve the facilities it offers year on year. When hotels and holiday accommodation was allowed to reopen at the beginning of July we realised we could book a few days break in Weymouth at a very reasonable price, so we did!

The caravan park had put lots of coronavirus precautions in place, and we trusted them to have everything thoroughly cleaned and well organised. In the end the five days we spent there were a wonderful bit of "normal" after everything that has happened over the past few months. We decided that as the statistics are looking pretty good at the moment, now was the time to venture out a bit more. We ate out one evening, and had afternoon tea at a favourite cafe, which both seemed quite momentous! Overall I felt quite safe with a couple of exceptions, both of which were outdoors when we found ourselves on paths with pinch points which made social distancing impossible, although we were only passing people briefly and only sharing space with them fleetingly.

On Tuesday we spent the day pottering around Weymouth and sitting on the beach. It was busy-ish. Based on experience we thought about half the numbers we would expect on a sunny day during the school summer break. There was plenty of space on the beach without feeling crowded. We indulged in a holiday tradition of eating takeaway pasties for lunch while sitting on the harbour wall, and bought artisan ice cream from a nearby shop. Their vegan peanut butter ice cream with sea-salted caramel is one of the best flavours I have had, with or without dairy.

On Wednesday H wanted to visit Lulworth Cove or Durdle Door, and we decided on Durdle Door as it has a larger beach and the weather forecast was good. Despite visiting the area so often, we had somehow never been there before, although we have been to Lulworth several times. We wanted a walk, so we parked at Lulworth and walked along the coast path to Durdle Door. There was a one way footpath system in operation which made it a very much longer walk - quite a lot of people simple didn't bother with it and went the wrong way down the shorter route. We were good and followed instructions! The beach was beautiful. Definitely somewhere we will go back to. The only downside was the steps down were two-way traffic and very busy, although there was plenty of space on the beach once we got to the bottom. The walk was tough going in places for myself and M (mainly the initial climb up from Lulworth) but well worth it. After our beach trip we went for coffee (or tea) and cake at the cafe where we had booked a table.

Thursday's trip was in the opposite direction, heading west from Weymouth to Lyme Regis, famous as a setting for Jane Austen's novel Persuasion and for the Cobb harbour where the French Lieutenant's Woman was filmed. We had been there before, but a very long time ago and I was the only one who remembered it. We walked all the way out to the end of the Cobb (a stone harbour wall first build by Edward I in the 13th century), sat on the beach for a while, had some amazing Asian street food for lunch (filled bao buns and salad), bought and ate fudge, and had takeaway coffee sitting on deckchairs overlooking the beach. There may also have been ice cream.

Yesterday we checked out of the caravan, drove part of the way into Weymouth and then walked the rest along the seafront, spent some time on the beach, and repeated our pasty and ice cream lunch from Tuesday before heading back to the car and home. I think we all came home feeling refreshed and better for the change of air and scenery. We are hoping now that we may be able to book another short break for the beginning of September, before TG goes back to school and H starts her new job.