‘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.
West Bay is lovely though (and everything beyond it, like Charmouth & Golden Cap & Lyme Regis), or at least it was last time I went there (was only a child back then).
As a trip by itself, Chesil Beach has to be boring, but at you least you can motivate yourself by thinking of all of the nice things at the end of it if it is part of a longer trip/circumnavigation.
Yes, for all its monotony, admittedly Chesil beach has a certain charm of its own.
The coast you mention after Chesil beach ends … West Bay, Golden Cap, Charmouth and so forth … really is lovely. I should be back there sometime in the next few weeks.
Though not neccesarily a trip for the sea kayaker who relishes the open ocean, paddling up the fleet behind Chesil Bank from Ferrybridge into the nature reserve is a nice bimble. Tide runs under Ferrybridge itself, and in the narrows near the Army bridging camp, but all very sheltered.
You get to go past the oyster beds, the army bridging camp, the chickerell camp ranges (check they’re not firing first), and into the nature reserve, and on to the Swannery at Abbotsbury.
That’s useful. I haven’t been up there, I was told that the army turned you back after a short distance. How far can you go before you hit military land?
I’ve only paddled up to just beyond the bridging camp which is a very small area but at a point which constricts the tide to quite a difficult passage.Timing is everything! I do know he area and only a small area of land (not including the lagoon itself is military-there are firing ranges which might explain why someone could have been turned away, the rest is normal farmland and campsites. Might be some restrictions when you get towards the swannery and nature reserve at the far end