A walk up a hill on a sunny Saturday

A note to those who are unaware:

you can click on any of the photos below and get a larger version of them....

The weather on Saturday was predicted, by those meteorological soothsayers in the Met Office, to be sunny patches with rain later, at about 4 p.m. so we set off early(-ish!!!) and visited one of our favourite breakfast haunts, The Old Farmhouse, in Burley for the daily breaking of the fast. This having been accomplished, we set off once more towards the West. The car found it's way to Sandbanks in Poole, home to some of the most expensive real estate in the world, but we ignored this (plebs that we are) and drove on past to catch the chain-link ferry across to Studland.  A short while later, we had parked the car and we had wended our way to the cliff tops at Old Harry, which is a large chalk sea-stack at the westernmost point of Poole Bay. 

Old Harry flanked by "his wife" to the right and the mainland to the left

This chalk is soft and friable, as compared to other rocks that one usually finds making up cliffs and this can be seen where the (normal) gentle lapping, of what are fondly known as waves here, has polished the surface.

This stuff behaves exactly as, well, chalk! I picked up a piece and inadvertently (yeah, right!) dragged it across my jeans, where it left a lovely white mark just as a piece of the white stuff that we older folk knew and loved from school lessons. Youngsters these days will have no idea......

Just to give you an idea of the size of these things - and think about the fact that they were laid down long, long ago as accumulations of the skeletons of tiny creatures - take a look at the size of the people in this picture, as they walk along grass growing on the cliff tops near the top left.

As one of us still has to be very careful about how much she does (I do realise I am over-protective of her) we did not go the whole hog and walk to Swanage which was around the next headland, nor even to the top of the hill. However, a goodly way up, we stopped and viewed the scene before us. Unfortunately the panorama doesn't do justice to the actual scenery, it really was an amazing sight! Directly above the head of my better half, on the other side of the bay is Bournemouth and Poole is about halfway from there to the left.

All in all, a wonderful day. I haven't mentioned that it was cool and there was a stiff breeze blowing, which I always enjoy. These days are going to become fewer and farther apart for us, here in the upper latitudes, so we must seize them while we can!