The view from here

This is the sea! For most of our stay it was like glass, and around the coast of Dorset the sea is particularly clear with some beautiful colours reflected by the amazingly blue sky.

I am an inveterate bird watcher but rarely manage to capture them on camera, but the cormorants sunbathing above were so still it was easy keep in mind they were way down in the sea and I was way high up on the cliff.

And below a fluke shot of a seagull landing.

Unusually for a seaside town Weymouth has some lovely green spaces along the top of the cliff by the fort, so you get just a brief feel of the seasons unlike St Ives, where little is green apart from the exotic trees and window boxes.

One of the benefits of early morning dog walking is views like this

and this view of the Georgian seafront

This has to be the ginkiest road sign ever especially since statistically the most harm inflicted on children will be by someone they know and think they can trust.

This amazing sight was in Abbotsbury where many of the cottages are thatched.

I called this one Mint Sauce...mmmm

My sister wanted to visit Durdle Door and we chose THE hottest day of the year to go, we stupidly decided to walk back to Weymouth along the coastal path, just a 10 mile stroll!!! How insane? Yes, Mother did throw a strop, and yes, she did spoil it, we ended up walking inland to find flatter fields with no view but which she was able to walk across, rather than the triganomic function graph my sister had chosen for her.

What we should have done is got the bus there and back and just jumped into this enticing cove, instead we did the walk stopping for lunch in a pub with the commercial nous of a MacDonald's.

Isn't it lovely?

Kitty was a dream this holiday, she is so different now that the heady bitchy adolescent days are over, that said she is still a conundrum, I caught her wearing 2 year old bra a size too small that had even given her a rash. Only then could she face up to the fact that she had grown, she really struggles with the idea she is getting older, yet bizarrely can't wait for her school day's to be over. Kitty hates school, lacking any academic inclination she has struggled both in and out of the classroom, she has little in common with her classmates and has become increasingly reclusive. I hope she finds a Job that brings her a little more happiness as it breaks my heart to see her so low.

Another day another beach and another griping moaning Mother, this time Chesil beach, we had intended to visit a local tropical garden but it was nearly £10 to get in, which with all of us was nearly £60, which was ridiculous, so I suggested a picnic on Chesil beach instead, it was less than 2 bloody miles but did she moan? YES, so whilst Kitty and I sat on the ridge they skulked below on a scrubby bit of grass before walking back to wait for the bus home which was one whole effing hour late... Another nail in Dorset's coffin

When I was a child my gran had a gravel path which she would refresh every now and again with a lorry load of gravel, we used to laugh our heads off trying to get to her house, if you have ever walked on loose gravel you will know why.

That top again, and had she made the effort she would have had her lunch looking out over this amazing view. I was brought to this coastline a great deal as a child, I have photographs of me in a bathing suit sitting on gravelly beaches whilst my geologist father abandoned us to tap with his hammer on bits of rock. Mother clearly does not view these memories through rose tinted glasses and instead sees them as evidence of a abandonment by my father, a thread that clearly ran through their entire marriage. Still I loved it here, but I guess it will back to Suffolk next Easter where the hills are flat!