‘Chesil Beach (sometimes called Chesil Bank) is an 18 mile (29km) long, 200 metre wide and 18 metre high shingle tombolo in Dorset, southern England. The beach is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. This tombolo connects the Isle of Portland, a limestone island in the English channel to Abbotsbury, though it continues westwards to West Bay near Bridport. It is the largest tombolo in the United Kingdom and it forms a large lagoon (the Fleet) on its shoreward side. The beach is steep, showing a clear storm beach. Pebbles on the beach are graded, with the coarser stones nearer to Portland. Fishermen familiar with the beach claim to be able to tell their location from pebble size alone.’ - Wikipedia.
As the facts and figures in the Wikipedia quote demonstrate, Chesil Beach is a truly amazing geographical feature. However, only close up does the size and scale of the thing sink in. Simply crossing up and over is exhausting and any attempt to walk along it will soon be curtailed due to the daunting shifting pebbles. Chesil Beach is both the largest and most unique single feature of the south west (if not the UK) coast. It is also incredibly boring to paddle along.
The beach is surprisingly steep and if there is any swell, launching will be a whole lot easier than landing. Heather and I have paddled the length of the beach just once, ten years ago. As if spending seven hours looking at identical pebbles wasn’t stultifyingly tedious enough, we did it in dense fog.
Today, we launched from the southern end of the beach, but paddled away from it. Despite my dedication to thoroughly research South West Sea Kayaking, I am determined at all costs to avoid paddling along Chesil Beach again. Sorry.
Latest Comments ...