Purbeck Hills in Dorset

It's the first time we've been around in the Purbeck in the winter for a few years so I thought it would be nice to mention one of my favourite walks in the hills around Corfe Castle. The "Purbeck Way" goes near Corfe but stays off the main hill (called West Hill running west funnily!) instead choosing the low, usually muddy ground, on the north side of the hill and continues across Creech Heath. When doing this part of the walk, if you look southwards across the heath, you see a prominent hill stood north of the main Purbeck Ridge, this is called "Creech Barrow Hill". There is no obvious track to the top from the heathland but today when doing one of my favourite walks from Corfe Castle to Kimmeridge and then via "Heavens Gate" to Swyre Head, Kingston and back to Corfe, I decided to do a slight detour. Leaving Corfe and climbing West Hill, I continued along the main ridge onto Knowle Hill, before descending to the road and then climbing up Ridgeway Hill as I normally do. At the top, before my route descends to Whiteway Farm to cross the valley to climb towards Kimmeridge, there is a path north over Stonehill Down Nature Reserve which crosses a minor road and then ascends Creech Hill. There is a trigonometry stone at the top and two seats to enjoy the view of the Purbeck Hills to the south and over Creech Heath to Poole Harbour and Wareham. It's height is a meagre 192 m (SY 92144, 82408), slightly higher than the Purbeck Hills to the south but the top does give great views of the whole area including the now flooded water meadows of Wareham, Poole harbour and over to Poole and Bournemouth.

View from Creech Barrow Hill (192 m) looking northwards to Poole Harbour.

This is not the highest point in the area as later when I reached Swyre Head, the elevation was 203 m. The view of the coast line from Swyre Head is spectacular and one of the best places in Dorset to see a large chunk of the coastline in both directions. The actual coastal path along this section is closed at the moment because of landslides last December but I think if you don't mind the slog up Smedmore Hill past "Devil's Gate" it is a great walk, although muddy at the moment. Today was a fine break in the weather but we're told the deluge continues tomorrow!

The Maladetta North Face in the Spanish Pyrenees, Glacier, September 2013.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the North face of the Maladetta mountians in September 2013 with a picture in the book written by Harold Spencer and published in 1898. In the photo from the Portillon de Benasque taken on my trip last year, the smaller glacier is fairly clear and also the grey moraine left by the glacier of old. This is shown as two "tongues" on either side of the central ridge. This moraine corresponds well with the extent of the glacier shown in the photo from the 1890s. It would be interesting to see some photos taken in the middle of the last century.

Maladetta mountains photographed by me from the Portillon de Benesaque (2444 m) in September 2013. Notice the grey moraine showing the previous extent of the glacier clearly visible in the 1890s

Maladetta mountains from the north, summer 1896 or 1897 (Harold Spender, "Through the High Pyrenees with Illustrations and supplement section by H. Llewllyn Smith", Publisher A.D. Innes & |Company, 1898. Notice the extent of the "tongues" shown as grey moraine in the photo of 2013.