Four go mad in Dorset

Braving the holiday traffic,TOH, Cheryl and Andrew and I headed down to the south coast; destination a working farm campsite near Corfe Castle. Actually the traffic wasn't so bad, and we arrived before sunset to put up our tents.

The campsite was packed with weekending families and groups. And it was a proper farm with milk cows and wool sheep littering the surrounding fields. I think technically they lowed us to sleep, although it sounded more like plain old baaahing and mooing.

The next day we went to Lyme regis to hunt for fossils. We found a few little ones in the mudstone, mostly shells and ammonites (sp?).

There were many many people hammering away at the rocks in hope of hitting the jackpot. I don't know if they found anything but we were all rather shocked at the mother who swore at her little boy and threw her hammer at him so it bounced off the rocks and hit him on the chest. 'That really hurt mummy,' he said. She replied: 'Oh fuck off.' Nice.

Camping gives you a very close encounter with other people's family life. The tent to our left contained two parents and three little boys. They all seemed to enjoy shouting at and bullying the youngest son, Rory. All weekend we heard the poor little bugger being called a 'dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb baby' at the top of the oldest boy's voice, which he had made hoarse from shouting so much. His mother kept screeching at him not to sit on chairs and his father, annoyed by Rory's lack of cooperation at getting dressed, snatched his breakfast away and told him he wasn't going to eat that morning and zipped him in the tent.

To our right a sulky teenage girl was physically chucked out of bed for lazing about while her parents were trying to pack up the tent. She called her mother a stupid bitch and got a slap round the face for it. All of it really made me reconsider having children.

On Sunday, we did a very nice walk from Swanage over the Nine Barrows hills back to Corfe. We started off in an old fashioned train station to get the steam train to the coast. We bought cardboard tickets from a pensioner through a proper window in the ticket hut.

The platform was decorated with 50s memorablia: tin posters for life-enhancing tobaccos, old wooden porters trolleys and trunks, ancient timetables and, of course, lots of colourful flowers. It was like being in a time warp.

The steam train pulled in make lots of lovely steam train noises and spewing out sulphiferous coal smoke. The whistle blew and we were chugging down to Swanage. We had a compartment for six in the old slam-door carriage. It was great fun.

Swanage however, was a vast gathering of all that makes you cringe about the British seaside. Arcades, screaming children, fat people slowly cooking like pink sausages and swaggering youths.

But we weren't staying and soon left the town to find the start of the hillside path. The walk was splendid. The sun was shining, blue butterflys were flitting round the bushes, the views were magnificent, there were herds of very pretty moo cows and even a lone black bull standing on a blonde hill.

As we approached the end of the walk back in Corfe, we saw a little robin sitting on a gate, darting down the ground now and then to find a grub to eat.

We didn't go in the castle itself but we admired its craggy ruins overlooking the town.

During the day, Andrew had kept his radio on Five Live to listen to the cricket commentary. It was getting a bit tense by the afternoon when we arrived in the town so we went into The Greyhound to watch the rest of the match on the telly.

Luckily for the mood of the holiday, England won.

The pub was hosting a beer festival, and the night before we had spent a couple of enjoyable hours in there watching all the drunk country folk. But after the cricket we ordered food there and the service changed for the worse. The staff wrote the wrong order down, food took ages to come, problems with the chef and we left without yours truly having had anything to eat. It was the rudery and length of time it was taking to make a bowl of pasta.

So, avoid The Greyhound for food in the height of a beer fest. I had a lovely mushroom risotto across the road instead.

Andrew and Cheryl left on the Monday morning. TOH and I went down to the beach at Studland for the day.

It was gorgeous, people flying kites over purple heather, sitting in the sand dunes watching the sea and sleeping.

All was as it should be except the bastard Dorset Council issuing us with a parking fine for parking on the road near the beach along with every other poor sod who thought single yellow lines were not active on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

That evening we watched the bats flying round the pond on the farm with our bat box before falling into our tent and straight to sleep.

Packing up was nice and relaxed and the journey home uneventful, except for the big fire on the M25 - it was shut from the junction we joined on, but luckily the other way so our route home was clear. Near the M23 jucntion, the road was closed again going the other way as a 4x4 towing a horse box had overturned. The horse seemed to be OK but that couldn't be said for the car.