St Aldhelm's Head

The tumbled rock and scree below St Aldhelm's Head makes for rugged terrain, add areas of slippage, wet and viscus, and the spikiest of dense thicket, no more that a foot or two high but posing impenetrable obstacles and you have the ingredients for an interesting walk. Though, the views you were afforded by far made up for any inconvenience. I don't know for how long quarrying took at St Aldhelm's, but I know the headland was busy throughout the 19th century and probably into the 20th; rusting steel cables still run from near the cliff top down to the rocky plateau below, cut galleries and scree are all that remain of this industry today. There's other material too amongst the jumble, what looks like ivy covered rock, is on closer inspection brickwork and concrete, what's left of the Second World War radar station which operated on St Aldhelm's Head in the early war years. Nature though is taking back what's hers and year on year there is less human enterprise to be seen, and soon you wouldn't know anything or anybody had been here. I can remember 30 years ago, there was plenty of visible evidence of human activity here, you could see brickwork, drainage pipework, concrete and lots of pieces of rusting metalwork. All gone, all but a few pieces, returned to the elements or camouflaged, consumed by creeping undergrowth.  It's easy to lose a couple of hours exploring, I've visited here many times over the years and still there are parts I've not explored, new things to see and secrets to find. Climbing up, out onto the quarry gallery on the cliff top, I look back, I mustn't leave it too long before returning.