Dorset

Standing like an archway leading to along forgotten enchanted land, Durdle Door juts out to sea from the Dorset coast at Man o' War Bay. A tranquil setting on a calm day, it is transformed into an awe inspiring spectacle in wilder weather, as giant waves pound swirl and crash round and through it. Seen starkly white against a deepening sky, it shows up well the limes ton of which it is composed. It is the constantly crumbling nature of this limestone that gives so much pleasure, along the coast, near Lyme Regis, to collectors of fossils. Between Durdle Door and Lyme Regis lies the ancient port of Weymouth, now setting off point for steamers bound for the Channel Islands, as well as being a popular seaside resort.

Dorset is a rich farming county, famous for its rolling pastures, providing its milk and its delicious cheeses. The valleys are dotted with farms which seem, to the casual observer, to have changed little over the years. The epitome of peaceful, rural, England, this was King Alfred's Wessex, with his capital at Winchester.

Much of England's history has been written on the pages of these fields and heathland. King Edward 'The Martyr' was killed by his stepmother in 978 at Corfe Castle. Now seen as a romantic ruin standing on a hill above the village, it was left to decay into its present condition after it was besieged by Oliver Cromwell during the Civil War. A small village, with the unlikely sounding name of Tolpuddle, was also to find itself written into the history books after a much later incident too place there in 1834. For it was in that year that a group of farm workers, in attempting to improve conditions for themselves and their fellows, tried to form a union. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, as they became known were, because of this action, arrests and sentenced to be deported to Australia. A great outcry ensued, which culminated in more far reaching effects than the could have imagined.