2016 Bonus Track: Dorset in December

The Cobb, Lyme Regis, on Christmas Day

We spent Christmas in Dorset, in a rented cottage on one of the hills above Charmouth and Lyme Regis. When the children were smaller, this area was a favourite holiday haunt: you can spend endless happy hours turning stones on the beach looking for fossils, and the unique Dorset geology has created a wonderful miniaturised landscape of steep hills and secret valleys that is ideal walking country, suitable even for little legs. And there's always somewhere for an ice-cream, a cup of tea, or a pint and a decent meal nearby.

It's rotten with archaeology, too. Probably nowhere else in the country has such a density and variety of barrows, hillforts, standing stones, ruined castles and abbeys, and all those other ingredients that add a certain "woo" factor to any walk. There's a heathy stretch of the A35 between Dorchester and Bridport that is signed "AREA PRONE TO FOG" and they are not kidding. It was swathed in low cloud as we passed through, and the glimpses of the roadside barrows were distinctly spooky. If you look at the coastline beyond the Cobb in the photo above, and compare with the one of Lyme Bay below, you'll see that the entire length of clifftop around Golden Cap is enveloped in a fat white icing of dense cloud.

Hardown Hill looking towards Charmouth 

On Hardown Hill at dusk

On Golden Cap 

Quite apart from tourists and the local population of farmers, fishers, and tea-shoppe folk, it's a spot that has long been popular with artists and other people trying to make a living from their wits and their skills. Like the areas around St. Ives or Brighton, some sort of critical mass has been achieved that attracts a steady stream of incoming talent. If you should happen to want to find a potter or an upscale joiner or even a TV chef, Dorset is not the worst place to start. So, inevitably, it has been the subject of much painting and photography over many generations. There was an exhibition of mainly Dorset landscape paintings from the early years of the last century at Bristol's Royal West of England Academy earlier this year (Inquisitive Eyes: Slade Painters in Edwardian Wessex), for example, and it seems like there is a little gallery selling art of every description around every corner in every small town. Actually, that's not entirely true: conceptual work, installations and video, say, despite their predominance in the metropolitan art scene, are very thin on the ground compared to more traditional media. But you can quickly tire of yet more views of Golden Cap, or Maiden Castle, or fishing boats, or decorative variations on the theme of the ammonite; if I thought mid-Wales was tough to portray in a meaningful way on a flying visit – even a series of flying visits extended over many years – Dorset raises the bar almost impossibly high. But, given the weather conditions in the first half of our stay, and the time dedicated to our more Christmassy activities, I was glad enough to come away with a few respectable exposures.

Talking of the challenges of contemporary landscape photography, if you saw my recent piece in On Landscape, keep an eye out for an upcoming friendly bout of arm-wrestling in the next issue between me and Joe Cornish – oh yes, the Joe Cornish! – over the views expressed therein. Should be fun.

Lyme Bay