After putting off our campervan road trip around the south west coast of England for a couple of days due to the storms, we finally set off on Tuesday morning. With absolutely no plans of where we were headed apart from somewhere in Dorset, we set off from the Dales in the pouring rain. We knew that we would have to drive through the storm that had battered the south coast last night, and the first couple of hours were pretty hard going.
Although the traffic was heavy, we made really good time, even through Birmingham! We stopped off at Gloucester Services for a coffee and got the Wild Guide book out to make a decision of where to go for our first stopover. Ultimately, we were headed for the Purbeck Isles near Poole and a quick search on P4N threw up a stopover right next to Stonehenge. Having never visited the ancient monument, and with high hopes of a good sunset, our decision was made.
It turned out to be a great choice. The rain stopped and the sun made an appearance. The park up is on an old drovers road that runs beside the monument and we had a perfect view of the stones from the van window. It is an unmaintained dirt track of a road and the potholes were HUGE and pretty tricky to navigate, however we were rewarded for our persistence.
There is a little known public footpath that runs down the side of the monument – so we did the paupers tour and saved ourselves £36! The sunset was pretty special but the sunrise was even more spectacular.
After waking up to the exceptional sunrise and a blue sky morning, we set off towards the coast. We had planned a stop off at the Badbury Rings on the way down, an Iron Age fort ringed with concentric earth works. However, the weather had different plans for us, the heavens opened when we arrived with a forecast to stay that way all day. We appreciated the view from the van then kept on moving!
The Badbury Rings are situated beside a tree lined avenue – an old Roman Road. In 1835 William John Bankes planted 365 beech trees down one side of the road and 366 down the other side to represent a leap year. It was a pretty impressive drive beneath the woody canopy and I can imagine it would be absolutely stunning when the trees are all green and lucious.
Sadly, the weather did not improve and we spent Wednesday afternoon hunkered down in the van drinking tea, writing blogs and editing before finding a park up for the night in an old quarry carpark.
We awoke on Thursday morning to a thick sea fog that barely lifted all day, however it was warmer and dry so I counted that as a win! We went back round the coast to Studland Beach which is on the Purbeck Isles near Poole. There are miles of sandy beaches along that coast line and we spent a lovely couple of hours just walking along the beach.
One place that has been on my bucket list for a while is Durdle Door, so we moved around the coast to find a place to park. I had heard that parking was expensive in the daytime for campervans, but I was quite disgusted that there was a flat rate fee of £20! We only wanted to spend an hour or 2 walking along the beach – it was too cold and foggy to be there any longer. A quick look on the P4N app (which also shows places for day parking) indicated that there was free parking about a mile away. Perfect.
We spent the afternoon exploring the cove at Lulworth and Durdle Door, which was very impressive but also VERY busy – where had all these people appeared from on a cold Thursday afternoon in early April! There was a continuous trail of literally hundreds of people walking down to the viewpoint.
After being cold and traipsing through muddy fields we decided to look for a campsite with hard standing for the night so we could get showered and the van cleaned up. Again, we were shocked when we looked to book into the only campsite within miles of Durdle Door- £61 for one night for a small campervan in low season!! Being on our early retirement budget of £200 a week - we changed our search and found somewhere further towards Bridport that had the greatest showers ever!
Both van and humans all scrubbed up, we set off on a more historical tour on Friday morning. We parked up near the quaint village of Abbotsbury and hiked up to St Catherines Chapel, set high on a hill above the village. We were rewarded with great views and photo opportunities. Back down in the village we found a butchers run by a South African woman, I was really excited to find some boerewors – a dense South African sausage. We just need a night on a campsite now so we can have a BBQ. The village of Abbotsbury is absolutely stunning with all sorts of quirky shops and cafés. We explored the Abbey ruins and bought some eggs from an honesty box before moving on.
We spent Friday afternoon meeting up with a lovely couple that we had met on our ski trip in Les Arcs - we were really inspired by their travel adventures as they had spent 6 months touring Europe and travelling as far as Greece in their campervan. We had a lovely guided tour around their hometown of West Bay which had a great vibe to it. The beaches and cliff views were stunning but we so busy chatting we didn't really get any photo's!
As it was the last weekend of the school holidays, we decided to head inland and explore a small area of Dartmoor. We had spotted a village on P4N that had a pub stop over and also a village carpark that you could stay over at for a £5 donation per night.
It was such a beautiful village and a bonus for us was a visit by the wild Dartmoor ponies in the morning. The Rugglestone Inn was a great village pub, Richard decide to try a pint of the local scrumpy cider - one pint was definitely enough! He fair stumbled his way back to the van!!
Dartmoor was stunning and reminded us very much of the Dales and the area around Barden Moor. We spent a couple of days exploring the historic sites and medieval ruins that were scattered across the moors. The famous Dartmoor ponies were everywhere and you had to be careful driving as they quite like walking up the roads! We came across one group that had the most gorgeous very young foal who was still finding out how his legs worked.
I was also extremely happy when we came across a small herd of highland cows looking very majestic in the heathers.
With the weekend over and hopefully the holiday crowds dispersed we are headed back to the Dorset coast to continue our road trip - who knows where next week will take us!
Here is a link to our first YouTube Vlog of the South West of England tour:
South West Coast road trip costs - week 1
Full tank of Petrol (partly out of last weeks budget) – £83
Aldi food shop – £64
Mcdonalds at services – £10
Coffee at services - £3.05
Campsite in Portesham - £31.50
Dartmoor park up honesty box (2 nights) - £10
Morrisons food top up - £26
Morrisons petrol - £30
Boerewors - £7
Eggs (honesty box) - £1.60
Beers at the Rugglestone Inn - £8.40
Parking NT and Salcombe £5.60
Have a fantastic week,
Jackie & Richard
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