I only got the opportunity to explore the western end of this 95 mile long UNESCO World heritage coastline, but it’s enough to get a taste of the cliffs and beaches that hold stones and fossils from the Triassic, Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. Though it’s known as the Dorset and East Devon Coastline, the tourism board promote it as the Jurassic Coast, I guess thanks to Steven Spielberg and Universal. 

I was with my bike so cycled from the train station at Wool to the Durdle Door. Its picture features amongst every postcard collage along this coastline, and is a magnet for every visitor to this part of the world for its spectacular setting and for the ample opportunity it provides to amateur photographers, and by that I mean selfie-takers. It’s only a five mile ride from Wool, skirting through the lovely village of West Lulworth and past the estate of the same name which hosts the annual Bestival music festival. 

From the car park it’s a steep downward shuffle to the viewpoint and access to the beach. Like goats descending down a dusty mountainside, the other tourists and I made our ways gingerly down to two large green rubbish bins on the edge of a cliff. A slight anti-climax perhaps until you step past the giant receptacles and realise the view that welcomes you. At the left hand end of a small, sweeping bay, a pointy green hill whips its tail out into the perfectly clear waters below. The tail flicks up and then down into the water, creating a large gap, an arch that seems too big, too perfect to have been created by such an unpredictable force as the sea. It drew to mind the seat of a rocking horse sized for a giant to sit astride it.

The whole of the world heritage site can be walked along the South West Coast path which stretches about 600 miles from Dorset round Cornwall to the north coast of Devon. As it’s a cliff walk it’s pretty undulating and, if you were to walk all of it, you would be climbing the equivalent of four Everests of the course of the 600 miles. I’d stupidly brought my bike along so had to carry it up the hills and then cycle as best I could along narrow paths to the road that goes into Weymouth, the main town on the world heritage coastline. Weymouth has the Jurassic Skyline attraction (basically a donut shaped lift you sit in that rises up a pole to give you a view of the coast) if you want a view from high up. Apart from that it’s also a good place to access the Isle of Portland and Chesil Beach, both significant sites along the coastline for their history (Portland stone is quarried on the isle and Chesil Beach is one of the world’s finest tombolos). Further along the coast to the end of the world heritage site at Exmouth (also a nice town to stay in) there are plenty of quaint seaside villages with their own attractions. Lyme Regis I believe has a dinosaur museum which can tell you more about the coastline and provides fossil walks. The trainline from London stops at Weymouth though so Weymouth was as far as I ventured this time round. Overall, it would be easy to have a whole holiday on the Jurassic Coast, walking along the coastal path or staying in the towns along the way. It’s a popular summer holiday location for British families so roads get busy in July/August, but I suppose the site is big enough at points to have to yourself.