By Gads!

By Gads! The cliffs, that is. The stretch of coast under Gad cliffs is always off limits to the public because, I think, it's part of the Lulworth range overshoot  and probably hard to clear of any potentially dangerous ordinance, another reason maybe is that the land is steep, rugged, susceptible to landslides and has no discernible paths and so would represent difficult access anyway. Whatever, it's land less trodden, for sure. Until last year, in all my years of regular walking the Jurassic Coast, I'd never walked there, looked longingly from afar, but never walked there. I made a second foray into forbidden walking today, and managed to walk and scramble the entire length of the under-cliff. And it was marvellous. I imagine being out along this piece of coast during a storm would be a terrifying as it would dangerous, the rocky foreshore of jagged boulders is treacherous and the under-cliff unwelcoming so say the least, and that wouldn't be so marvellous. Though with the sun shining and a gentle sea lapping the rocks it's blissful. It's a real escape from the the more familiar, more human landscapes we find ourselves in; no matter how wild we think the places we walk are, more often than not they're the result of years of human activity and exploitation, and would have looked quite different in their 'natural' state. This piece of earth hasn't been altered by human activity (to my knowledge) With no tracks (beyond deer tracks), and what with the terrain being so rugged, you get a real sense of being in wilderness. I don't think the smile left my face throughout the walk, so many groovy things to see, so many different unfamiliar views of a familiar landscape. Not a long walk, although a taxing one, and one on which you have to keep your wits about you, wilderness is dangerous.