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Soon the Path heads inland across pasture and cornfields, up over the back of Linton Hill into Abbotsbury, the setting for your overnight stop. Abbotsbury is one of Dorset’s most charming villages, with thatched cottages, an immense medieval tithe barn and the massive St Catherine’s Chapel on the top of Chapel Hill. Nearby are the Sub Tropical Gardens full of trees, shrubs and birdsong, and the medieval Abbotsbury Swannery that looks after the thousand swans of The Fleet.
Next day is a straightforward walk beside the sea, at first with the Chesil pebbles underfoot. At West Bexington, the scrubby shingle has been designated a nature reserve—it is an excellent place for spotting songbirds. This is a truly beautiful section of the walk, with the sea to your left all the way.
Around Burton Bradstock you come to colourful cliffs of pale clay, dark oolitic limestone, yellow sandstone and white limestone, where the frequent rock falls bring fossils to light on the beach. A quick fossick in search of a fossil, and you walk on the last couple of miles to reach West Bay’s harbour, the setting for many episodes of BBC TV’s Harbour Lights soap. And then it’s inland to Bridport—the journey’s end.
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