Driving after the god called Education

I am invited to feel guilty. About many things probably, but especially how I am burning up the planet via the Gritmobile.

No. I won't feel guilty. Not for our access to this coastline in this snippet of time; the moment I can snatch before I lose this country again.

Anyway, guilt is a feeling I do not do a lot of. Neither guilt, nor regret - the real hard-core wounding, chew-my own-lips-off regret. Not much of that, either.

Not necessarily because I have sailed through life making choices which are fantastically blameless and am now an all round twoshoes-goodsome type, no.

Probably because I am a battered old crone. I am old enough to have made mistakes enough. They have forced certain reconciliations with myself. I come to a quiet forgiving truce with my bright and dark parts; a settlement which allows me to venture out to explore the world everyday, feeling more or less intact.

I avoid being paralysed by guilt and regret. I take opportunities as and when they arise. I do not beat myself up. I balance imperatives, priorities and desires. I make shifty compromises. I stay sane. And sometimes it all leads to the Gritmobile teetering precariously on an eroding cliff edge.

I console myself. If things go really badly, the Gritmobile plunges over the cliff, and the world goes up in a puff of smoke, I can always rely on being English. For most disasters, I have a script: I know how to bumble on, make the best of things, say nevermind couldbeworse putthekettleon.

Now, having unwisely blurted out my failings and inadequacies, here's today's drive-fest along the south coast, burning up your planet.

(And if there was a frequent and reliable shuttle bus, picking up and dropping down we happy tourists strung out along this remarkable coastline, I'd probably take it: driving is quite tiring and I cannot stop for a refreshing beer, half-way through.)

First stop: the RSPB Reserve at Weymouth.
I'm sorry, Weymouth, I never want to come here again, ever.
Your town is horrible. I couldn't wait to get out.

(The Weymouth Tourist Board is of course welcome to put us up in five-star accommodation
and show me a good time, if only to prove me wrong.)

Third stop: English Heritage, Portland Castle.
Brilliant, as all English Heritage is.

See? The EH audio guides are fantastic.


You're wondering what happened to the Second stop aren't you?
Weymouth was so horrible, I had to pull into a layby for a cry.



Fourth stop: Chesil beach.


This place is not on Planet Earth.


You must turn left at Zelta-Minor and avoid the asteroid.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger found Earth rubbish on it though.
They politely endured the boring pointless lecture on Portland Limestone
(which forms an admirable curve at the end of Chesil beach)
then set to, building ships to sail across the Atlantic.

Fifth stop: Lulworth Cove.
Exhibition centre, ice cream shop and geology, all rolled into one.

I think someone will ride a Geography GCSE.
Then I can drive about the countryside looking at landscape while I burn up your planet.
And I can shift some of the blame to the educational enterprises supported by government.

Sixth stop: Durdle Door. Unavoidable limestone arch.
You cannot look at Lulworth Cove, then not go over the hill for this.

Now, let's drive back to the site for a nicecupoftea (while the planet dies a little bit more).

Okay, I apologise to Budleigh Salterton

Well, I am sorry about this, it is a tad embarrassing and all, but oh dear. Would it help if I gave my defence first, and say that I have thwarted the crime?

This, Budleigh Salterton, is Squirrel's attempt to stash your beach in the back of our car.


I said, Squirrel, you cannot nick all the pebbles from this beach! People like them here! What's more, this site is specially protected to stop crims like us coming down and nicking it. We must be responsible.

Well, you should all know that as far as a life of crime can be measured, I am an amateur compared to her. She has developed masterful strategies. When her pockets are filled to bursting, she will take off her trousers and tie up the leg ends to make bags. Then she can walk about in her underwear while making off with your pebbly treasures.

Here she is, in the act of taking off her shoes.


Do not think she is ridding her shoe of a tiny sharp pebble, irkling its annoying way under her big toe. No, she is in the act of putting pebbles in, thanks to her technique of lodging rocks in her toe-ends. (This technique was perfected back here.)

Be kind on her. She may be your future geologist. And her enthusiasm is understandable. Have you seen these beauties? Our guide book explains how these gorgeous wonders might be 440 million years, and counting!


Of course I made her tip out her stolen stash from her clothing. She has probably slipped some by me, stowing them in her knickers. But if I find any about her person, be assured they will be cherished. They will grace our geology display. This fine display is on the stairs leading to the bedrooms, and has been added especially to exhibit proceeds of our rock theft*. (Some of those rocks even have labels! How dedicated can we be?)

We finally depart Budleigh Salterton with our responsibilities and dignities intact. Admittedly with a somewhat grumpy Squirrel, but at least the Gritmobile does not sound like two hundredweight of walnuts being smashed with a giant hammer every time we roll over a speed bump (and believe me in the past it certainly has).

So we make our way forward to the red desert landscapes of the Triassic coast and the fantastic rocks of Ladram Bay.

Here I go a bit weepy, sad and nostalgic, so am simply putting up pictures to drool over later, in secret.












For the educational record and the completeness of our day's geological tour, I should also note that we toured the quarry at Beer.

(very dark)

Then returned to the van for supper and a history lesson on the Georgians. (That is, watching Blackadder 3, Ink and Incapability, but in my book it amounts to the same thing.)


I have been asked already how you find out the full tour along this Dorset-Devon coastline. Well, excellent guides exist down here. I bought one.

I also bought this book to read as we travel, but the children complain that it sounds ripped out from the tourist information panels with a few jokes added. Ahem. Sorry about that, Mr Vince. I link to this by way of compensation.

I am also reading bits of this site: geology-speak but with lots of rock porn pictures and it does make us wonder about words, so that is good. Thank you Southampton University for assisting our wandering education again. Who knows, one day Squirrel could be sitting at your benches. She has form for that as well.


* I may add a photograph of the stair-wise geology at some point, so everyone around Britain can spot their rock that Squirrel has nicked. Please form an orderly line to prosecute us.

No apologies for Charmouth, Lyme Regis, or Seaton

A tiny part of my brain wonders if I should apologise for what is about to happen on this blog.

But I tell my tiny brain, I'm not going to apologise!

What is about to happen is all about self-interested gratification and self-absorbed enjoyment and it's all mine.

Obviously I'm not going to apologise! It would be like having a completely fulfilling experience and a satisfying moment of pure physical pleasure - like sipping a hot cup of cocoa while wearing carpet slippers - then putting down your mug and saying sorry. That would be absurd, right?

Or maybe a self-indulgent blog would never attract any readers! I keep hearing how the whole point is to write so you are read, because without an audience there is no point.

I beg to differ. From the pov of my outsider world, you can come and go as you please. I write selfishly. My fingers are driven to it, I want joyful pictures of England to look at from my gloomy den in Hong Kong, I might need this record to get one over on a Local Authority jobsworthy, and I have other things to do, and amusing myself with this blog is a way of not doing them. (If you're reading now, I assume the last of those reasons is true for you too.)

Now who was it said that a historian is like a deaf man answering questions that no-one asked? When I heard that, I thought, welcome to my blog.

So, here begins a self-indulgent week of educational rockwatching in Dorset. Pure pleasure. If you choose to happen along, then I can say, who knows where it will take us, we rootless, free-roaming romantics of England's coast? We seekers of answers, we learners, we child scholars of the world?

Okay, the week might turn out less Aristotle and more Then we did this... then we did that... then we did something else... for which also I am not apologising and not returning to edit. Take it or leave it.

But one thing's for sure. The week ahead will have plenty of photos of rocks.

The fantastic Charmouth beach! We begin the ammonite scrounge right here, begging the sea to throw us those tiny perfect pyrite ammonites that glint like studded metal in the sand! Tiger mugs an old lady, who gives up her collection in an act of selfless generosity. Or maybe to escape from us quicker, I can't quite tell.

Kids, you had your fun. Over to Lyme Regis Museum for their excellent introduction to geology, geologists, and local history. (Included to prove my kids can write, jobsworthy.)

Pause to re-enact the French Lieutenant's Woman down at the Cobb.

And, not even finally for the day's adventures, because this morning I shook these children early out of bed, there's still time to spend the early evening pebble-picking in Axmouth and Seaton, which looks exactly the same today as the last time I recall seeing it in 1965.




This is a journey, along this coastline, that I needed to take. I want to indulgently delight in it, each and every day, be never fretful or apprehensive about it, enjoy it, live it for what it is and not ask it to be more than it is.

We are taught in our culture that for something to be learned, there must be suffering. For a wisdom to be gained, there must be experience of pain, or despair, or solitude. In seeking knowledge, we must come upon it with hardship, show how our understanding is limited, apologise for our shortcomings, and show humility in error.

For this week, I'm proving all that wrong. Learning can be had without those ideas to attend it. It can be simply a moment of enjoyment, self indulgence, and pure pleasure.


That too, needs no apology.