Durdle Door sunrise, Tyneham, Worbarrow Bay, and Corfe Castle | - Click on the image above to view gallery
|
|
 Telephone box in Tyneham
Having taken a couple of pictures at the top of the steep steps I carefully made my way down in the half light and could make out another person there by the rocks. It’s always good to know you aren’t the only one mad enough to be getting up and lugging all your camera gear around in the dark. It was actually very nice having his company and talking about all the things we like to take pictures of. He was staying locally with his family for the week and was planning on getting up for sunrise every day.
Very soon a lot of the colour had gone from the sky where I was in Man O’War Bay so I then quickly walked up and down the steep steps to the beach to Durdle Door and took a few more pictures there too. At some point in the year, near to Christmas I’m told, it’s possible to see the sun rising through the arch. Now that really would be something worth getting up early for. The colours today weren’t spectacular as such, more subtle, but were beautiful all the same and there really is something in knowing not many people will have seen it except in the pictures I took. I got back to the hotel just before 8am and my cooked breakfast tasted even better than usual I can tell you.
After breakfast we went for a drive intending on visiting Corfe Castle but on our way we realised that signposts to the deserted village of Tyneham indicated it was open. This village on MOD land is only open at weekends and we had been told that this weekend it was actually shut but we followed the signs saying it was open and were delighted to find it actually was. This village, however, has a very sad history.
 Inside the school now a museum.
Despite promises made by the MOD to the villagers that they would return this was not to be. The end of World War Two in 1945 did not see the return of the villagers who wrote to the War Office, dismayed at the deteriorating condition of their cottages, the overgrown fields and shell-damaged church. As time went by, they intensified the pressure until finally, in 1947, the news broke that the parish of Tyneham-cum-Steeple was to be retained by compulsory purchase to become part of a 7,200-acre gunnery range, ending all hope of their return.
Eventually public pressure was put on the government to act and allow public access to the village at certain times, and this happened in 1970. Nowadays it is open most weekends when you are able to walk on the footpaths through the ranges and visit the remains of the village. Today, however, on a beautiful spring day it felt such a sad place to be and it really felt so wrong that the people who used to love living in this remote village never had the chance to do so again.
We walked around the village looking at the buildings made safe for access noticing the bullet holes on what was left of the Rectory. The school has become a kind of museum, and 'preserved' as if the children had just left (although the school had actually closed in 1932 - long before the 1943 evacuation). The church has been restored too and we read many heartbreaking stories of the people who once lived there on the displays that lined the walls.
After walking around the village we then followed the path of just over a mile to Worbarrow Bay where a busy fishing community once occupied the hamlet. Very little of the many cottages survive now but the beach was just beautiful and for someone who had been up since 5.30 it made a perfect place to lay down and have a rest in the warm sunshine. There were plenty of warning signs reminding you it’s a firing range including one in the middle of the biggest patch of Wild Garlic I think I’ve ever seen. One of the firing targets was set up on Worbarrow Tout, a spit of land we could climb to the top of and get great views of Worbarrow Bay and the surrounding countryside. We spent quite a while here taking in the views all around.
 View from the Tout.  Taking in the view.
We finished looking around and decided that we still had time to visit the small town of Corfe Castle and the thousand year-old ruined castle on the hill. It has been a favourite tourist attraction for many years and it is very striking to look at from a distance. Looking at the ruins from close up it’s amazing just how some of it remains standing to this day. There is also one of the best Park and Ride schemes I can think of, where it’s possible to park your car close by in Norden and take a ride on a steam train to the very busy town of Corfe Castle. The railway then continues to the Isle of Purbeck and ends at Swanage. We were really pleased when, just as we got back to the car park, the unmistakable sound of a steam train could be heard so we rushed to get to a vantage point to see it.  Corfe Castle  Ruined walls
It certainly had been a long, very busy but enjoyable day. Seeing the sunrise was worth getting up extra early without question, but visiting Tyneham really has left me with a long-lasting memory. The village has been preserved in time in many ways and is a vivid reminder of when life was so much simpler, but the people who lived there had a real sense of community that was taken away from them and never returned as they were promised. That will never seem right to me.
 |
