Down in deepest Dorset...

There come times during the year where you just feel so knackered that you feel like everything is getting on top of you, all the hills you have to climb seem insurmountable and the crappy bits seems to be happening more often than the good bits. Colds, headaches, general feelings of malaise, all contribute and wear you down. This happened to us this year and we decided that we needed a week away from home (two weeks would have been better but neither of us has the holidays left), somewhere quiet, out of the way and in the country. Somewhere we could do very little except sleep, eat and chillax. So after some searching, and shouts of ‘how much!’, we settled on a week in a thatched cottage in Burton Bradstock.

It was just what the doctor ordered. Plenty of walks, good food, lots of sleep in the darkest place I have been in a long time, time on the beach and hardly any of it using the car. We used the local buses to get along the coast before walking back along the cliffs, or just wandered out. We went to West Bay for ginger and honey ice cream (and later some fantastic fish and chips), Bridport for the market and smoked mackerel, Lyme Regis for amazing bread, Dorchester for a disappointing detour, the Cerne Abbas giant to marvel at his manhood, Chesil Beach to get windswept, and Beaminster to say ‘good morning’ to just about everyone there.

It was a tonic. No wonder people who live down there live longer than anywhere else in the country. Not only is it a beautiful landscape, rolling hills and warm golden buildings, the people are actual quite nice. At least they will talk to you, not like Farnworth where the first thing most people say is unprintable.

On both outward and return journeys, we stopped at Charlton Orchards in Somerset to stock up on strange varieties of apples: Red Pippen, Orleans Reinette, Kidd’s Orange. We decided not to go for the medlars after I asked what they were like and the bloke compared them to ‘uncooked cake mixture’.

It was lovely to spend time in a village in the country, but made us realise how much you need a car and how important a village shop is. In some ways we have it easy in the town but, as MC Escher said, ‘Simplicity and order are, if not the principal, then certainly the most important guidelines for human beings in general’. It’s that simplicity and order that appeals.