St Aldhelm's Head to Emmett's Hill

The path between St Aldhelm's Head to Emmett's Hill.

Swyre Head walk

Lime Kilm

Chapmans Pool and St Aldhelms Head from Swyre Head

West from Swyre Head

Encombe Bowl

Corfe Castle

Purbeck was stunning today, I say today, Purbeck is always stunning, no matter what season or weather it's a landscape that stirs the spirit. Purbeck is a landscape with millennia of human activity etched into it, though never really tamed, it remains in essence a wild place. Yeah, on a sunny day it looks the rural idyll, but walk it in bad weather and it can transform into a formidable and foreboding environment. Still, today was the former and beautiful walking it was.

St Aldhelms Head from Swyre

And looking east over Encombe towards St Albhelms Head from Swyre Head the views are none too shabby either.

St Aldhelm's pastel sunset

And the day ended with a pastel sunset. Which was nice.

Memorial

As I've previously mentioned the decent and ascent from the under-cliff of St Aldhelm's Head is somewhat sketchy, though someone has undertaken it to create this quite striking memorial to 'TMKB 1942 -2014'. Simple, but effective. A nice gesture from someone for someone, in a nice place too. I wonder who they were?

St Aldhelm's Head

The under cliff at St Aldhelm's Head is a strange and unique landscape of boulders and blocks, scree slopes and gnarly  windswept shrubs (many of which have razor sharp thorns) brambles and grasses. A mixture of natural processes and quarry workings, now long deserted and being retaken slowly by nature. It's a rugged and unforgiving piece of land, exposed to all that the elements can through at it and the sea off it the scene of many a shipwreck, although on a sunny day, even a cold one as today, it can appear mysterious and exotic, and quite captivating. Amongst the jumble the works of man can be found; a carved Purbeck stone ball, thick rusting cables trail from the workings down towards the shore like the remains of a giant spiders web, old water tanks, fragments of brickwork and concrete, all manner of human detritus is scattered about. Over the years I've seen these pieces of human pasts decay, disappear or be consumed by the undergrowth. It makes for an arduous walk, with plenty of scrambling about and a sketchy decent/ascent, but one which is well worth the effort. You'll often see deer wending one of the numerous animal tracks, but I don't remember ever seeing any other people there (although there's some evidence of other adventurous walkers) and you'd usually have the place to yourself. St Aldhelm's Head is a special place, for sure.

St Aldhelms Head and Winspit

The sun shone hot today, like it was summer, and the air was warm and thin, even on the coast no refreshing breeze was to be had; the cool sea looked so inviting as it rolled gently over the rocky shore, that if I'd brought a towel, which I'd considered though then thought, no, I'd have braved a dip. But, it's not summer is it, and that nagging thought wouldn't leave my mind; no matter how wonderful, or welcomed, days like these are, they're not right and there'll no doubt be consequences, that I know. Our climate is changing, no one can't, with any honesty, deny that; though many still do either through willful ignorance or greed. You certainly couldn't deny our part in it standing here on St Aldhelms Head with a thick band of ugly coloured filth hanging in the air a few miles of shore and extending as far as you could see in both directions along the coast; that's pollution for sure, that is, our pollution.

Like many others I do what I can to limit my 'carbon footprint' as we call it; well, as with most of us, not what a 'could', more what I'm prepared to whilst still maintaining as comfortable a lifestyle as my conscience allows. For instance, I could not have driven here today; I cycle and walk when I can, but still without a car I couldn't get to places like this and I really don't know how I'd manage that. Like the green prozac of the woodland, these environments keep me sane(ish) in our increasingly psychologically damaging and spiritually oppressive world. It's easy to justify our actions, look, I just did; we make fine and sound arguments as to why we do what we do and that's why the climate's fucked in the first place and why technological solutions to our problems look so appealing to many; we all want to save the world, as long as that also maintains our status quo; we can sacrifice a few islands, some low lying landscapes, so some places get a touch arid or some icebergs melt, that's not too much to loose to keep the lights on, surely? Particularly if all those things happen 'over there'. Of course, I'm being silly and that's not how I think, not at all; and climate change, although people would like to think so, doesn't just happen 'over there', it happens all over, including here; and where ever it happens we're all culpable. I, like so many, try to negate, as much as I can, my complicity in our climates degradation; I drive as little as I can, meaningless?; I recycle, worthless?; I turn things off when not using them, delusional?; I try not to consume too much, pointless?; the problems are systemic and therefore as laudable as all our individual efforts are, the solutions have to be systemic if any chances of realistic change are to be achieved. Don't get me wrong, I'll still try to limit my impact, though in the honest knowledge that I'm only really easing my conscience and of course doing what's right, rather than actually easing the planets burden to any real extent.

Still, it was a lovely day at the coast.