NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Mrs ND&B and I are on a short break in a part of the world that we both love - the Devon/Dorset border. Even though we are here sans children (well they are 25 and 20!) we still find ourselves visiting places that we took them to all of those years ago, such as the Donkey Sanctuary east of Sidmouth. After stroking several of the sanctuaries inmates we then took the coastal path to Weston Mouth. This had nothing to do with the presence of a screaming botanical rarity, Purple Gromwell. It is not in flower at this time of year, but there was plenty to be found in fruit. A nice little sideline this botanical lark... It has been a holiday without me nipping off with binoculars, although, as illustrated above, it is hard not to take notice of the natural history - 4 Greenshank were on the beach at Charmouth on Tuesday, several Peregrines have shown up between Sidmouth and Golden Cap and whilst sitting in a posh Lyme Regis hotel garden, eating a cream tea, a couple of Fulmar were messin...

I've just spent the weekend on the Devon/Dorset border. On Saturday I took my brother-in-law Bill on the seven mile hike from Seaton to Lyme Regis on the undercliff footpath. We were blessed with glorious weather (until a bruising hailstorm ambushed us at Lyme Regis). This area has a well documented history. The unstable nature of the geology of the area has lead to landslides, slumps and slippages along this section of the cliffs, with major events occurring in 1775, 1828, 1839 and 1840. The 1839 slip was most probably the most celebrated as it happened on Christmas Eve and was visited at the time by two geologists (Buckland and Conybeare) who surveyed it. The area of land affected was over 1,000 yards in length and took whole fields down with it. The following autumn these fields were harvested in celebration of the event, which had by then attracted thousands of site-seers. Most of the footpath is wooded, meandering up and down through mostly beech and ash in a grotto-like ...