Evening stroll in West Bay, West Dorset
Category: travel
A woaw sky to wake up to
Some mornings are just more gorgeous than others.
‘Shepherd’s warning’ said my son.
‘Woaw…’ said my otherwise speechless husband.
Had to catch that sky before the sun came out.
Shepherd’s hut in Beaminster, West Dorset
One of my ongoing clients, the lovely Trish at North Buckham Farm has just installed a couple of shepherd’s huts on her farm to add to the B&B rooms and self catering apartments the farm offers in Beaminster. We had a bit of a play with product placement… Clipper Teas (of course! they’re from Beaminster), Dorset Cereals and Moore’s biscuits were displayed with the farm’s own eggs. It was fun to play around and find the best way to take a couple of images, a bit of a challenge to photograph considering the size of a shepherd’s hut (and the bright light coming in on a -rare- bright morning in August!)
West Dorset bubbly in The Bull Hotel’s Venner Bar
I took this image whilst the staff at The Bull Hotel were preparing for a very busy lunch back in July when the Olympic torch came to Bridport. I noticed the Furleigh Estate bottles of bubbly on ice on the bar and thought it would make a great shot of our fantastic West Dorset local produce with The Bull Hotel logo showing in the background.
At time of writing, The Bull Hotel have used it as their header for their facebook page… it worked!
Inspired by Simon Gudgeon and his Dorchester lakes
A Sculpture park will inspire different feelings and spark the imagination. This is what I saw when I visited Sculptures by the Lakes near Dorchester where Simon Gudgeon and his wife Monique have created a beautifully inspiring have.
A few more images can be found in my monotone set.
Weymouth and West Dorset, oh so quiet Olympics?
I took friends and family to Weymouth on Saturday 28 July to see the Battle of the Winds final extravagganza of aerialists, the 2012 torches wade into the sea, the pyrotechnics and generally start enjoying Olympic atmosphere. I mmm’ed and rrrr’ed it would be a bit too crowded, but hey it’s a once in a lifetime, so off we went.
There was plenty there, but not quite what I expected. An empty Monkey Jump Park & Ride welcomed us mid afternoon. A brand new double decker took all seven of us into town on the shiny new bypass that we are being warned not to use. Many more empty buses were waiting to Ride elusive Parked punters back to their cars. We strolled along the spacious promenade to the Bayside Festival where our Somerset friends learned about the Jurassic Coast wonders. My kids loved being taught a few tricks by the ExtremeSports team, great guys under the tatooes and dreadlocks. At 6.30 pm Bayside eating area had all of ten tourists having tea listening to the Acoustic Stage. At 7pm the long expected queue to get into the enclosed “Weymouth and Portland Live Site” was painfully tiny…
Great news as a visitor, plenty of space, unexpected free entry to Bayside; not such great news when talking to the locals who have invested money and worked hard for months. Why the big signs in surroundings counties of how busy it may get? Put them up when it does get busy, not before. These are the days of mobile phones, twitter, facebook, information is fast. Does St Tropez warn tourists in Lyon? NON. They let them all come, get stuck, take their money and let them queue. Tourists do come back, every year and it’s still a nightmare to get to St Trop.
I got cross with dorsetforyou. Stop caring people off I said on twitter.
“@natamagat Just informing people about changes and road closures. We want to encourage people to come down, but plan their journey 1st” they replied.
Well, West Dorset looks awfully quiet. The dreadful recent events due to floods and landslides are still fresh on people’s mind but it does not mean the whole area should be avoided. Local businesses that rely on Summer visitors need help, not scaremongering tactics.
Tell everybody how easy it is to get here (I’m told there’s even a High-Speed train from Weymouth to Bristol but it’s not advertised, go figure), that there’s lots to do in Weymouth, that Bridport has a fantastic Festival of Culture in August, that Beaminster has lots of great shops and brilliant restaurants all year round with perfect presents to take back home despite the Tunnel being closed.
Hello world, this is the year to visit West Dorset, it’s quiet and if you fancy art, culture, food (of course) oh and the small matter of Olympic sailing along our beautiful Jurassic Coast, well there are plenty of events that locals have been organising for weeks. It’s not too late to book a few days in West Dorset…
Photography on this post from Saturday 28 July in Weymouth.
Where have you been?
No post on Pardon my Franglais since January… Here is where I’ve been!
A weekly post for the Bull Hotel in Bridport has kept me busy, enjoying an art lesson, being treated to a wonderful massage (oh yes!), doing a behind the scenes mini-series…
Bridport and West Dorset Open Studios has been a great project to work on. As I can’t help myself, a few posts on artists and makers met along the way have made their way onto the site. Marion Taylor and her colourful West Dorset views, Sally Davies her digital art as well as exhibitions worth visiting. More to follow.
It’s been a real pleasure to meet interesting people who love what they do and want to share their love of art, their area, their work. What makes them tick, how they go about creating visual art and visiting their studios has been a great experience. We have new artists for this year as well as some that have been doing it for thirteen years. BOS 2012 will be a great mix of talent. (If you are an artist and live in or around Bridport, do get in touch, it’s not too late, yet!).
I’m also working on an interesting Community project ‘Beaminster Future’ , ten volunteers writing the Town Plan for the next ten years. We’ve had Open Days for the Beaminster Community to give us feedback on what is important to them so we can write a questionnaire with the issues they have raised. Once we’ve written the questionnaire on these priorities, got it back and analysed it, we’ll write a Plan and present it first to the Community then to the Town Council. It’s quite a challenge. We all want to reach all ages, all areas of town, want to make sure the whole Community knows about the questionnaire and most importantly fill it in. “We’ve heard it all before, there’s no point” is not a welcome reaction! So we’re working on it…
Busy with words and organising an event in August means there’s been less time for images but I can’t live without my camera, so a few clicks here and there have helped me keep sane… Just about!
Busy times, but good times!
Storm And Sun in West Bay
After a very stormy night, West Bay beckoned and it was well worth the frozen hands afterwards. Crashing waves, cliffs going from gold to almost black… and hardly another soul around. Mesmerizing.
Beech and Oak meet in the pond
in Thorncombe Woods, near Thomas Hardy’s birthplace.
Reflections dans la mare, feuilles de chêne et de bouleau dans le bois de Thorncombe, près de la maison de naissance de l’écrivain Thomas Hardy (Tess d’Urberville)
Beaminster under a moody sky
The sun and the clouds have been playing with the hills and the villages giving us a forever changing landscape.
Pardon my Franglais 