Photos from Portland

Two weeks ago  at this time (Sunday afternoon) we were  in our  room  in the  Heights Hotel , Portland digesting a delicious Sunday roast at the New Inn, Easton  hoping we'd have enough room for 3 course evening meal in the   hotel restaurant ( we were staying on a BBD basis). We just about managed it by choosing lighter items from the menu!

 This Friday to Monday  break  came at just the right time - Ian hadn't had a holiday since we were last in Weymouth in March and we were much in need of  fresh air and a change of focus from  sorting out house move.

 

We travelled down on Friday morning and  travelling light, caught the bus to the hotel, then headed straight  back out again to  visit the Chesil Beach  Centre  halfway across the causeway to pay homage to  my beloved fleet mudflats. The weather gods were with us, the sun was shining, the temperature  warm. Back  to the hotel to sketch  from the restaurant and begin to see the sky change . It was over by the time we had dinner in the restaurant but there were some lovely residual colours.

After an excellent  nights sleep and a lovely buffet breakfast overlooking Chesil  we headed out on foot to explore the Kings Barrow Quarry nature reserve, literally next door.  We had it pretty much to ourselves  and it looked rather different to when I went in May

 

 Took the wrong path leaving the reserve so we ended up skirting the edge of  the Admiralty Quarry, very much in action with giant sized bits of equipment and massive lumps of stone marked for use.

After coffee, pizza and florentines at Jackson's Art Gallery  we head down to Chiswell, I settled down to do some sketches of the West Weares   and pebbles from Chesil while having a beer at the Cove House Inn. Again, lovely weather and there  were lots of people enjoying the sun, difficult to believe it was October!

We'd booked an earlier dinner back at the hotel  to catch the sunset -  a lot more cloud around so not quite as spectacular but lovely panoramic views of the orange glow  

On Sunday to build  up an appetite  for  our roast lunch, we ambled around the Tout Quarry sculture park. We've been several times before but always find new discoveries  like this one   cleverly designed to look like it's fallen from the rock face.

The weather started to change on Sunday afternoon  and by Monday on our return to Weymouth station it was very wet and windy. But that had its' own magic in the ' white horses' waves and the colour of the red seaweed   washed up on the shore. A wonderful relaxing break, we're now packing boxes in earnest