Portland is a port, not a town, and passengers are not allowed to walk off the boat but are bussed to the port entrance in nearby Weymouth, which has been a port since Roman times. Our friends Steve and Jay Clegg met us at the entrance of the port and were our guides for our short day ashore.
The Georgian seafront of Weymouth stretches for miles along Chesile Beach, a 25 mile pebble beach deposited at the end of the last ice age.
The high pebble dunes stretch as far as the eye can see, guarding Fleet lagoon, an estuary of international importance. As we headed west towards West Bay, we drove along the spine of a mountain, looking down on Chesile beach and Fleet lagoon on one side and countryside on the other.
Our first stop was West Bay, the location of the TV series Broadchurch, with the stunning backdrop of the cliffs above a half moon beach of smooth pebbles.
The area between West Bay and Lyme Regis is a Unesco World Heritage site known as the Jurassic Coast, rich in fossil deposits. Steve had bought an ammonite from that coast at the rock shop near the Cliffs of Moher.
West Bay facing south
We drove through Abbotsbury, a charming stone village with thatched roof cottages, and visited the immense Tithe barn associated with the Abbey destroyed by Henry VIII (parishioners tithed 10% of their grain crop to the church, which was quite wealthy). Unfortunately the barn is today a children’s petting park. The swanery, which maintains huge flocks of swans (once raised for meat by the Abbey) was far too expensive to visit (17 pounds), so we moved on to the charming neighborhood os Sutton Poyntz not far outside of Weymouth, which dates to 849 AD.
We had a lovely lunch (Plowman’s lunch for me and Jurassic fish and chips for Steve) at the restaurant facing the pond before heading out to the Portland bill (peninsula) light, our last stop before heading back to the boat, last shuttle at 2:30.