Day 4 - Bournes and Bungalows

Day 4 - Weymouth to Lymington

I’m now three days into my journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats and I have to admit I’m beginning to feel quite pleased with myself. I’ve travelled on 11 different buses, covered roughly 350 miles and I’ve only come to grief once. True, I’m not exactly heading north yet but with two counties already under my belt I definitely feel I’m making progress. The whole of the South Coast is laid out before me, and I’m feeling in optimistic mood.

Except... 

Travelling by bus might appear a straightforward affair – you get on, sit down, and a bit later on you get up and get off again. But there are a number of important things to think about. Like where to sit, for example.

Personally, my default position is generally upstairs front if it’s a double decker, or half-way down on the right if it’s a single. This might sound a little odd but actually the view’s the thing; I’m anxious to see as much of my journey as possible so I need a clear uninterrupted view out of the window. 

According to Dr Tom Fawcett of Salford University, though, where you choose to sit on a bus actually says a lot about who you are. His researches – carried out on regular hour-long bus journeys between Bolton and Manchester, apparently – has led him to conclude that forward-minded people tend to sit at the front of the top deck while the independent-minded chose to sit in the middle. The rebels sit at the back, but then I think we probably already knew that.

Downstairs, the gregarious meeters-and-greeters sit right at the front, the strong communicators sit in the middle, and the risk-takers like to sit on elevated seats at the back because it makes them feel important.

I didn't appreciate the signals which my choice of seat might unconsciously give off to other passengers. So which one am I? All of them? None of them?

And don’t forget what Margaret Thatcher once (allegedly) said – that anyone seen in a bus over the age of thirty must be considered a failure. What she was implying, I suppose, was that the only reason people travel by bus is because they aren’t bright enough to earn enough to afford to buy a car. So. Is that what people think of me? 

Actually, it was Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, one of the original ‘Bright Young Things’ of the roaring Twenties, who apparently first made this scandalous remark but it's tempting to think that Margaret Thatcher might have privately shared her opinion. I mean, I don't ever remember seeing Maggie on a bus, do you?

So simply getting on a bus and finding a seat is not nearly as straightforward as you might think. And as I stroll along Weymouth’s sun-bathed seafront to get back on the X53 for the next part of my journey, I spot another potential difficulty.

I hardly expected the 10.00am bus to Poole to be empty but I definitely didn’t anticipate a queue at the bus stop quite as vast as this one. It snakes out of the bus shelter across the full width of the promenade and beyond, with those at the back of the queue effectively having to stand on the beach among the buckets and spades.

I’d heard about this phenomenon before but it was the first time I had actually encountered it - retired people with an unlimited travel pass plus a beautiful summer’s day. Well, you really can't blame them, can you.

This was serious though. I'm heading for an overnight stop in the New Forest so I have a fair distance to travel. And if I can’t catch the 10.00 bus then I’ll have to wait two hours for the next one. My itinerary, such as it is, will collapse around my ears.

Eventually, the X53 rolls purposefully into view and we begin the surprisingly rapid process of boarding - rapid because everyone but me has a concessionary bus pass which they simply flash at the driver. My ticket and change take a good deal longer. 

Weymouth

All seventy of us somehow manage to shoehorn ourselves aboard and I grab one of the few spare seats on the upper deck and settle back for the journey to Wantage. Looking around, I realise that I have reduced the average age of the passengers to something under 75 and thus it is in a gentle haze of Old Spice and lily-of-the-valley that we set off from Weymouth. 

Actually, I am rather sad to leave. I've enjoyed Weymouth's quiet little back streets and its animated harbour, its Georgian facades and its slightly creepy Technicolor statue to George the Third on the seafront. It seems almost impossible to get away from the Mad King here, but you can see why he's held in some esteem. After all, it was he who first brought tourism to the town, and he heaped further fame on Weymouth by becoming the first royal to use a Bathing Machine - a sort of shed on wheels which was rolled into the water and obviated the need to walk down the beach in full view of everyone. Apparently, as he carefully descended into the sea, a band in an adjacent Bathing Machine struck up “God Save the King” presumably in panic when they thought he might drown. 

More worryingly, Weymouth also holds the distinction of being the port of entry in 1348 of the Black Death, and a recently discovered mass grave of Viking men with splintered skulls suggests Weymouth's hospitality can’t always be relied upon. But then we all have our off-days.

Everyone seems to be going to Poole for the day, but I am getting off early at Wantage. We are making slow progress, too, because our driver keeps having to pop upstairs to count empty seats so as not to overfill his bus. It is packed by now, and already hot and stuffy, a situation made infinitely worse by the tendency of some people to automatically close any window in case it causes a draught. Today the temperature on the upper deck must be nearing the upper 90’s yet the one remaining fractionally-open window is causing one couple right at the front to tut-tut loudly and generally make a quiet English fuss behind their copies of the Daily Mail. Fortunately, everybody pointedly ignores their harrumphing.

The road clambers out of Weymouth past pretty thatched cottages, with cottage gardens spilling onto the roadside, and past unending acres of regimented holiday park. These are unremittingly ugly but local people are pragmatic. Holidaymakers remain the lifeblood of the south coast, one told me, and you have to put them somewhere, so it makes sense to put them as far away from the town as possible.

We are soon rolling into historic Wantage, but I’ve no time to find out exactly why Wantage is considered historic because I have an onward connection to Swanage. I am soon speeding back out of Wantage, this time across open heathland flecked with gorse and bracken which after all the open downland and green fields around here I wasn’t expecting. But this is nothing to the surprise I get when we crest a rise in the road and I get my first view of Corfe Castle.

I knew we’d be going through Corfe Castle but I hadn’t any idea of what to expect. So I am completely stunned by the view that now looms through the front window of the bus. The castle itself which stands gaunt on a ridge above the village has to be one of the finest views in England. It's astonishing. It looks like an oversized theatrical backdrop. If Stephen Spielberg ever made a re-make of Camelot, this is where he’d film it.

Corfe Castle

Jaw hanging loosely on my chest, we enter the extravagantly pretty village of Corfe Castle which appears gradually from behind the ruined ramparts of the castle. This is an extraordinary little place of thatch and stone-roofed cottages of local honeyed-grey stone. It is fabulously, unfeasibly attractive in a conventional English sense, an almost Hollywood–esque ideal of a quaint English country village. It is overwhelming. I promptly run out of superlatives.

The bus climbs out of the village onto the ridge to the south of Corfe Castle affording equally stunning views back towards the village but, as I've said, I’d already exhausted my supply of superlatives so I can do little more than just moan gently. 

We are quickly down into Swanage, a bright little seaside town boasting its own preserved railway. Our bus conveniently pulls up right outside its perfect little Southern Railway terminus and I am immediately faced with a choice. It is lunchtime (nearly) so an instructive walk about town with the promise of a sandwich somewhere seems indicated. It is then that I hear the whistle of a steam train.

After an inquistive look inside the station, I quickly find myself eating a fluffy, buttery baked potato in a 1950's dining car shunted thoughtfully into one of the station's platforms while a pretty little Southern Railway tank engine arrives picturesquely from Corfe Castle. Swanage, clearly, would have to wait.

Swanage

After lunch, I climb aboard the lustily-named Purbeck Flyer for the short journey to Studland, an extremely attractive area of heather moorland and sighing pines, yellow gorse and fine Silver Birch. A nature reserve since 1946, apparently all six species of British reptiles can be found amongst its heathers and trees and its four mile beach attracts thousands of sun worshippers, bird spotters and, presumably, reptile watchers. It was also here that Michael Palin dragged himself out of the water dressed in rags to announce “It’s….” at the start of the very first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

The road ends abruptly at the narrow neck of Poole Harbour and we wait for the Sandbanks Ferry, a motor vehicle ferry which doesn't use propellers but simply drags itself along on chains attached to each bank. It's unusual but it's not the only chain ferry in Britain, though it must be one of the most scenic with the wide blue sea to one side and the yacht-infested expanse of Poole Harbour to the other. Watching dinghies floating past close to the windows of a double decker bus is acutely weird, though.

We’ve saved ourselves a 25 mile road journey through the centre of Poole and the ferry deposits us in a different world, among some of the most expensive real estate in the country. The obvious wealth around here makes you wonder why the bus company provide a bus service at all - surely everyone here goes by Bentley. 

Sandbanks Ferry

Well, apparently not. At Alum Chine, an elderly couple, he in his finest tweed, she with an impeccably coiffured blue rinse, hail the bus and make full use of their concessionary bus passes for the short journey to Bournemouth. They look completely out of place, like two Ascot-bound toffs who've accidentally washed up at the local dog track. Perhaps it was their chauffeur's day off.

Bournemouth seems noisy and intimidating after the gentle pleasures of Swanage, and I take refuge in St Peter’s Church which is open for coffee and biscuits and where I fall gently into conversation with two charming ladies manning the tea urn.

The busy town from which I was trying to escape was, they tell me, little more than a few fisherman's cottages surrounded by heathland at the start of the nineteenth century. Very few people ever visited, which left the locals to fine-tune the art of smuggling for which this area with its gently sloping beaches and steep wooded chines was ideal.

The government, however, as governments are want to do, took a dim view and with the imminent threat of invasion by Napoleon decided that a spot of martial law was required. A Corps of Light Infantry commanded by Lieutenant Lewis Tregonwell was therefore given responsibility for the eastern part of the coast. Tregonwell was to come to know this area quite well and especially liked that spot around the mouth of the Bourne, so on his retirement – he was a Captain by now - he set about acquiring land on which he built a house, “The Mansion”, which was used as the Tregonwell's summer residence. When friends and family came to stay and remarked on the beauty of the area, he bought more land for his friends to build their own houses, plus cottages for summer letting. It's been a popular holiday resort almost ever since.

I venture back out onto the streets of Bournemouth and promptly discover the chine. This beautiful little park with its neatly tended lawns and overhanging trees, and the Bourne itself splashing away at its centre, is at the very heart of the town. It's entirely possible to tear free from the stores and boutiques and within moments, simply by crossing a road and entering a gate, you can find yourself in a world filled with flowers, bushes, strolling couples and giggling children. It is like Bournemouth’s own version of New York’s Central Park – and I quickly fall in love with it.

Bournemouth, deck chairs at the ready

And then suddenly I'm on the beach. One minute I am walking under blossom-filled trees and the next I'm on Bournemouth Pier with miles of golden beach disappearing off into the distance on both sides. It's like walking through a doorway, a change so sudden that it’s all slightly disorientating. I mean, this is a beach bolted directly onto a busy city centre and reached by means of a tree-dappled watery glade. Whoever designed this was a genius.

By now, I am a big fan of Bournemouth though I still can’t work out how it was possible to combine three such different environments in so small an area. Anyway, I resist the urge to paddle (just) but I amble along the beach until it was time for my next bus, the X12 to Lymington. 

The journey turns out to be slow and unexpectedly dismal, past miles of expensive beachside villas, then street after repetitive street of bungalows and wannabe detached homes. It looks bland, artificial, conservative, unending. Obviously local bus services have to go to where there are passengers, and this being the South Coast where there is a higher proportion of retired people than anywhere else in Britain, that means servicing mile after mile of bungalow-infested housing estates, along roads with names like Curlew Close, Kingfisher Meadows, Brambly Way. It's a shock, though. For the last four days it's been stunning countryside all the way and, of course, I knew it would end sooner or later. But I didn’t expect it would happen yet. 

Lymington

Eventually, the brick gives way to beech and suddenly, really quite suddenly, we are in the New Forest.

Lymington is a real breath of fresh air, with its red-tiled shops along its main shopping street looking more authentically English than anything I had seen since leaving Bournemouth. It looks the epitome of the small English town - simple, self-contained, unpretentious. The bus halts right outside my hotel for the night, a rather splendid 18th century coaching inn called The Angel. My day is clearly ending on a high so to celebrate I march straight up to bar, order a pint of locally-brewed Ringwood Bitter and apply it orally. 

Lovely!

NEXT Lymington to Ryde – where I arrive at a former rocket testing site on an open top bus, visit my first bus museum of the trip and find myself idly re-enacting the Blitz on my way to Ryde.

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Map courtesy of those awfully nice people at Google