Fishink in Dorset. Cerne Abbas Giant, Thomas Hardy country and more !

Hello one and all and welcome back, or rather should I welcome myself back from a small escape down to Dorset.  My fab partner surprised me and booked a week away in a cottage, right in the heart of Thomas Hardy country, based in the tiny village of Marnhull. This was the cottage.

and inside there were many delights to discover and appreciate too including a wood burning stove for those wintery evenings.  Although (as you can see below) there were some rather odd neighbours !

The Marnhull Messenger tells us that the village is featured in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbevilles but called Marlot, and the tv adaptation of Tess was also filmed there too.  Many local towns have references to Hardy, like this lovely cottage.

There were great walks from the doorstep down along the banks of the river Stour.  Which reminded me of a childhood love for the programme ‘Out of Town’ which I used to watch as a teenager every sunday lunchtime with my dad. It was presented by Jack Hargreaves who often fished in the Stour and chatted to the camera audience about a varied array of rural pastimes and professions that were sadly slipping away.  I could hear his soothing and informative talking in my head as I wandered down the lanes and footpaths.

Not too far away was the beautiful Cerne Abbas, home to one of the white chalk figures well known to the area.

The monastry is well worth a visit too.

The most famous of these Chalk figures, however is the Cerne Abbas Giant, cut into the hillside above the village. The figure is over 180 feet high but it’s origin and age is unknown.  You can’t get too near the giant either as he’s safely fenced off and the best view is actually from the opposite side of the valley. It was an amazing area to walk in and I also thought of Eric Ravilious (another amazing artist who I’m a huge fan of) who did some wonderful paintings of the chalk figures and this area too back in the late 1930’s and 40’s.

How is this for a view ?

I also managed to gather a small collection of interesting weathervanes and thatched roof ornament on my Dorset travels. I guessed that the roof top animals were the thatch makers trade mark, but old country beliefs state that the stack and rick ornaments were created to keep away both birds and witches. The designs were originally of a religious nature, thus intended to scare away witches, but a countryman always hedges his bet, and would say the ornaments also gave a witch something to play with, thus diverting her attention from making mischief elsewhere.  One of the birds below is actually real, in case there are any blog reading witches out there !

More about Dorset later in the week.