West Dorset winter
Neil Barnes explores the coast and hinterland of West Dorset in the bleakest weather
Published in February ’19
Winter in West Dorset might sound like a contradiction in terms to those only familiar with the area from the dog days of summer, of fish and chips on the beach and ice-creams melting before you can eat them.
But as anyone who has suddenly found the temperature dropping by ten degrees, or visibility being reduced to nearly zero on the A35 between Dorchester and Bridport can tell you, there are places and times when West Dorset can be as cold and bleak as anywhere in Dorset.
Few places feel colder than a seaside resort in winter, and that’s not just because of the wind whipping saltwater spray off the sea; there’s just something really quite cooling about being on a seaside promenade out of season. Cooling perhaps, but there’s nothing quite as nice as being the only person on the beach, or blowing the cobwebs away at the end of the festive season with a family walk in the teeth of a brisk wind as the waves are thrust repeatedly onto the shingly shore by winds, unobstructed by land for thousands of miles, off the Atlantic.
There was a more dangerous side to winter last year, though, as the beast from the east brought a Siberian chill to the landscape. The extraordinary sight of snow banks either side of the roads at the top of hills for weeks at a time was not something one sees every year in West Dorset.
Normally verdant landscapes were reduced to a monochrome palette of white, grey and black as only hedgerows and trees broke through the white blanket covering the countryside.
There’s little if anything in the way of wildlife evident in any of these shots, and the prolonged late winter last year wasn’t good for it.
Still, if the weather from last year taught us anything, it is that following a deep, dark winter, there may appear a very long, very hot summer to make you long for the cool breezes and crisp clean air of winter.
The characteristic rolling mists – as well as some striking cloud formations – over the cliffs of the West Dorset coast
Golden Cap retains its characteristic hue, despite the white coat of snow and frost covering the landscape below
A splash of colour on the beach at West Bay with East Cliff and Burton Bradstock beyond
One of the best views in the county, this normally benign vista, looking south-east towards Abbotsbury’s St Catherine’s Chapel, the Fleet and on to Portland, masks how treacherous the roads can be in winter
The irresistible forces and immovable objects of nature: the erosion of the cliffs and coast during the winter months can materially change how parts of West Dorset look from one year to the next
No winter picture essay on West Dorset would be complete without a shot of a snowy Colmer’s Hill, in this case as the county tried to break its grip on winter
The seasons’ effects on the grain of this wooden bench were wonderfully picked out by a deep winter frost before the wan sunshine eventually thaws it
You can see the different effects of the respective effects of snowfall and tides as shown by the different depths and types of snow that remain on the beach at West Bay at low tide
One gets an idea of the weight, force and volume of the seas breaking on the shores from this shot taken after the 2018 freeze came to an end. Each cubic metre of sea water weighs over a tonne.
