SWANAGE TO CHAPMANS POOL
ON LOCATION VIDEOS
It All Goes Off at............
ST ALDHELMS CHAPEL
A long trek gets a well deserved reward, an absolutely stunning sunset over the coastal chapel at St Aldhelms Head.
One of my favourite videos to date, this one is full of will it/won't it moments but finally it all comes good
Its all going off !!!
Interesting Facts about this coastline
* Swanage is best known for its Purbeck stone which was quarried from before the 12th century
* Swanage has two piers, One is just remnants having been blown up to stop it being used for landing in World War 2, but you can still see the pillars poking out of the water alongside the much newer pier which is a check list shot for the the Dorset landscape photography community.
* The Wellington clock tower in Swanage was originally from London, after the great fire when London was being rebuilt with Purbeck stone it was shipped back to Swanage by George Burt who actually used it for ballast on his Purbeck Stone ships. It was given to Thomas Docwra as a gift by George Burt and was restored and erected where it still stands today. It does however miss the clock, which was its original purpose.
* Anvil Point is home to one of four lighthouses in Dorset and still functions to this day.
* Dancing ledge has an interesting history as it was a quarry for Purbeck stone and ships used to come along side the ledge when the tide was right to be loaded before setting off to London via the Thames, it was so named due to the way the water hits the ledge and appears to dance.
* The swimming pool area of Dancing ledge was actually blasted out of the rock by a local school to give the children an area to swim safely in. Something that wouldn't be allowed today due to heath and safety and the fact you need to climb down a cliff to get to it.
* Winspit & Seacombe Quarry served much the same purpose as Dancing ledge and was one of the main centres for Purbeck stone quarrying, There are many caves there which show the mine works and are today inhabited by bats.
* Winspit caves have featured in many TV shows, including twice in Dr.Who and are favoured areas for the climbers of Dorset to test their skills.
* Winspit & Seacombe are big favourites for landscape photography as they receive sunrise over the water throughout the winter months
* Chapmans Pool in Dorset is one of the premiere areas for fossils on the Jurassic Coast, and new ones are found daily here as the cliffs erode away.
* Chapmans Pool is well known as an area of landslides which are extremely common. While they do reveal new fossils they are obviously very dangerous and a lot of people have been killed in the past by them so care needs to be exercised here.
* Chapmans Pool holds a memorial on the top of Emmetts Hill to the Royal Marines who were killed in an attack by the IRA.
* Houn's Tout was photographed by one of the country's leading landscape photographers, Joe Cornish for one of his many books and he speaks very fondly of it.
* Chapmans Pool can be photographed from the top of the cliffs of right down in the pool itself which makes to very popular for Dorset landscape photographers, it also sees sunsets directly in front of it during the summer months