Studand

 

May through September dogs are required to remain on their leads throughout the Studland and Godlingston national nature reserve. So this morning was our first walk here since April, and it was lovely to be back. So much change. The beach and dunes are quite a fluid environment always in flux and some cliff collapse at Redend Point were natures contribution to change, though it was the hand of man which was most noticeable. Middle Beach has been transformed, the stone filled gabbions are gone, as is the slipway, and all signs of the former parking area and café, the road down now truncated just hangs there. The only reminder that there was ever anything here are the line of slighted World War Two anti-tank obstacles in the intertidal. One thing that hasn't changed is the Type 25 pillbox on the beach below Redend Point, testament to 1940's engineering maybe, even though undertaken in a hurry and under duress. I remember the pillbox being half way up the cliff in the late 1970's, and I imagine it was once stood on the top of the head close to the nearby Fort Henry.