Saturday broke cloudy, but there was a promise of sunny breaks and only a slight chance of rain.  We decided to visit a couple of sights close to Swanage.  First stop was the Village of Corfe Castle.  It’s a cute little town just ten miles or so inland from Swanage.  There were still patches of blue sky as we arrived.  We parked downhill from the town and took a hiking path up to Corfe Castle.  The castle is maintained and administered by the National Trust (NT), a charitable organization that runs innumerable sights in the UK.  We are members of the Royal Oak Society, the US branch of the NT.  Over the years it has saved us a ton of money on NT admission charges.

The castle is an interesting and quite popular ruin.  We hiked through the grounds and then spent a bit of time in the cute town of Corfe Castle.  We saw the Swanage Railway steam train that travels to Corfe Castle from Swanage.  Perhaps another day for that.  Elaine visited the NT shop and purchased a pair of NT binoculars to replace the one she inadvertently left at a Fall League baseball game in Mesa.  And we visited the village parish, the Church of St. Edward, King & Martyr which was being readied for a wedding.

Then it was on to Lulworth Cove on Dorset’s World Heritage Jurassic Coast.  The cove has a huge parking area, and it was filling fast as we arrived at 11:30 AM.  As we paid our parking fee, it started raining.  The cove and the nearby Durdle Door (more later) are not very enjoyable in the rain.  Anyway, we hightailed it immediately to the Cove Inn, a popular pub at Lulworth Cove for a spot of lunch but more importantly to get out of the rain.  Elaine drank Aspell Cider while I had a couple of Kronenbourg 1664 lagers (French beer from Alsace).  Elaine had a chickpea and squash burger (“Lightly spiced and made with butternut squash, chickpeas, adzuki beans, seeds & pulses, with Monterrey Jack cheese, gem lettuce, tomato, red onions and our burger sauce”) with chips (fries).  She loved it.  I had a delicious Steak and Tanglewood pie (“Our signature pie – braised British steak in rich velvety gravy made with our award-winning Tanglefoot beer, served with buttered mash and seasonal vegetables”) which won the 2015 award for best pie in England.  Yum yum!  And I ate all my broccoli and carrots too!  No desserts.

The rain stopped and we wandered down to Lulworth Cove.  There was a group doing survival training in the very picturesque cove.  Delightful place.  Then it was time to decide whether we walk the mile-long gravel path to see the Durdle Door.  You could see the path winding up a rather steep hill.  Oh, well, we came this far, so we had to do it, especially since the clouds were dissipating and sunshine seemed likely.  Off we went.

So you finally get to the top of Mount Everest Dorset-style and you can see basically nothing.  The path proceeded to go down, down, down an even steeper climb to the overlook.  Down we went fully knowing that we had to eventually come back up again.  Finally we were there!  It’s a beautiful sight, the Durdle Door and the White Cliffs of Purbeck.  It was worth the walk!  I’ll let the pictures describe the panorama.

Pictures taken, we headed back up and down the steep hill to the parking lot.  Getting there, we were spent.  It was 3:00 PM now and we headed back to Rowena Cottage for a well earned nap.  On the way we stopped to buy some local strawberries from a stand along the road.

Elaine had planned to cook a light meal for dinner after our big lunch, but we were so tired that we didn’t feel like stopping at the store for the makings.  So dinner was mostly a repeat of last night after cocktails (vodka gimlet for me, red wine for Elaine) – crackers, cheese, and strawberries.  It was delicious and the strawberries were so much better than the usual store bought ones we are so used to.  A little TV – episodes of our favorite shows – the Chase and Dinner Date.  And off to bed!

PICTURES (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Our flights were mostly non-eventful.  No fights on board.  No overbooking dramas.  We left Phoenix on American Airlines 50 minutes late because of a gate hold due to anticipated runway congestion in Boston.  (Really, they knew that hours in advance?)  The prevailing westerlies were blowing hard, and we arrived in Boston right on time.  Virgin Atlantic from Boston to Heathrow left on schedule and arrived about 30 minutes late as the winds were less favorable.

At Heathrow we picked up our brand new Peugeot 3008 GRIP with no issues and by 11:30 AM we were heading south on the three-hour trip to Swanage in Dorset.  We had time to kill since we can’t get into our cottage until 4:00 PM.  So we had two stops planned.  First stop was in Farnborough for a visit to a UK Costco to pick up a few items:  folding chairs for picnics, a cooler for the car, a current UK road atlas to supplement the Peugeot GPS (sat nav to Brits), vodka (!), wine, etc.  Second stop was in Poole at a large Tesco Superstore to pick up groceries for the cottage.

Then, including a short ferry ride, it was into Swanage at 4:30 where we proceeded to Durlston County Park and down the private road to Anvil Point Lighthouse.  It is a working lighthouse run by Trinity House, the British organization charged with running and maintaining all the lighthouses in the UK.  For many years all the lighthouses were manned 24 hours a day by lighthouse keepers.  For that purpose, there are two lighthouse keeper cottages on site.  Nowadays the lighthouse operation is fully automated and is monitored from off site.  So Trinity House had the lighthouse keeper cottages fully updated and modernized so as to rent them out to tourists.  The tourists had arrived!

Then it was unloading the car and getting settled.  Rowena Cottage is beautiful.  It is well apart from the other cottage, and there isn’t another residence in sight in any direction.  We have a beautiful ocean view and watched the Condor Ferry arrive in nearby Poole as we sat outside drinking our cocktails.  It was cloudy and occasionally raining as we drove down from London.  Once here the clouds had cleared, and the weather was beautiful albeit chilly – mid 50’s.

Elaine’s sister Cindy suggested we name our car Pete Peugeot.  That sounded OK, but we made it a bit more French.  It is now officially christened Pierre Peugeot.  The Sat Nav (GPS) has an English accent, and our navigator has been named Penelope.  The 3008 Grip is one nice car.  The dashboard is as modern as possible with button for everything.  And it drives like a charm.  I find driving in the UK (on the left) much easier when piloting a left-hand drive car (like a US or French car) rather than a right hand drive English car.  Pierre is left hand drive since he was born in France and delivered to Heathrow for us.

Some pics of Pierre and Rowena Cottage at Anvil Point Lighthouse (click to enlarge in new tab or window):

Winter has past, and a busy travel season is about to begin.  Time to get the suitcases down from the garage and start trying to remember what all we need to bring on the first trip.  We leave this Wednesday for London Heathrow via a plane change in Boston.  The blog will probably kick off on Saturday from our first stop: a week in Rowena Cottage at Anvil Point Lighthouse just outside of Swanage in Dorset.  It looks delightful.  Now if only the reality matches up with the internet expectations!

We are buying a car again.  This time we will be getting a Peugeot 3008 Grip which hopefully will be awaiting us with the automatic transmission that was ordered.  You’ll remember last year our Renault had a manual transmission, not something I wanted to deal with while driving on the wrong (left) side of the road.  After an anxious hour or two, everything worked out and we enjoyed a very nice Volvo on the trip.  I didn’t switch to Peugeot because of that; rather, Peugeot had adjusted their US$ rates to properly reflect the new exchange rate realities whereas Renault had not.  The agents from whom we pick up the car at Heathrow are the same guys we dealt with in previous years – good guys, a father and son team.

We’ll be back at you from Swanage next Saturday!  Future trips will include Saratoga Horse Racing in Jul/Aug (Joe only); Toronto to Vancouver by 4-day train followed by eight days at Depoe Bay, Oregon in September; Elaine’s exciting adventure to Ireland with sister Caroline at end of September; Thanksgiving with family in Las Cruces, NM; and, finally, a surprise Christmas and New Years adventure in Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland – our European home away from home.