TIM BAKER

Aka what I did on my holidays, albeit a working one. I wanted to work on my seascapes, and also do the first ever Green & Smart sketchbook tour, assessing the Jurassic Coast area for sustainable transport as an artist. Can you really get around the area and work as an artist without cars?
I’m calling them Jurassic Jaunts since I was on the Jurassic Coast, walking parts of the coast from Weymouth to Swanage (but in reality taking the bus, I wasn’t confident with my tent and everything walking along the cliffs – even the easy part at Weymouth.

I’d walked around the Jurassic Coast about 10-15 years ago but was taking photographs then, but wasn’t sure if I managed to link up Weymouth to Swanage, I know I’d done some of the stretches of this coast back then.

After drama getting down there on the train – a frequent occurence, I’ve not had a trip down to that area without South Western Railways cancelling a load of trains so I abandoned the rail system at Poole and took the bus to the campsite near Weymouth, Eweleaze Farm. It’s site advertised that it always has space – it was officially ‘full’ but actually wasn’t, the ‘no car’ fields had plenty of space – I pitched my small tent up on the Point Field and had a marvellous view of the coast (more of that later).

I even had a nice meal as they had space at the Barn restaurant, and then retired to the beach below at 10pm and took some pictures – that’s Portland and Weymouth in the distance.

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Next day I wanted to draw the White Horse of Osmington from the coastal path, and you can see me hard at work working on my first drawing, which I also put on Instagram with another shot but this one you can actually see the white – well rather brown at the moment – horse. More horsing around later…(cue Bojack reference).

Although I have a new purchase – the fine nib Platinum Preppy 0.3 Pink – in my mouth in the pics, the drawing was done with a Monami Olika fountain pen, purchased at the same time. That’s an Extra Fine nib Fountain Pen, and quite cheap – i got that and the 2 Preppy’s (FIne and Extra Fine) for £10 via Cult Pens.

The Olika is slightly temperamental, having a different feed but works really well. I of course eye-droppered all three before I left. I do find my drawing changed style with the finer nibs, oddly.

Then I went on to Bowleaze Cove which is about a mile from the campsite, not the first time I’d do this walk (I even walked back from Weymouth along the coast one day, something I was planning to do with my big pack if I missed the bus from Weymouth.

Part of the reason for the Poole bus was that I’d get there too late for the last bus the other direction that left at 6pm. I had left with plenty of time, but two train cancellations in a row on an hourly service meant I suddenly didn’t (thanks SWR! Not)…I actually was glad I didn’t do that walk – it was a bit exhausting on the way back when I did it late one night. Although there are ‘secret’ (More) buses that go part of the way.

That’s the thing I learned, there are First buses which are the Jurassic Coasters, – X54, X52 – and then the Jurassic Breezers – the More buses that do that same route – 30 and further up the coast the 40 bus. And then there are local buses for local people, that tend to be a bit of a need-to-know basis that go to holiday parks. I never had a First bus come on time for the first week, but the More buses were always on time.

Then again the bus drivers on both companies could either mock you or be really nice; example question “Does this bus go to Lulworth?” “The bus goes this way” – yup, yokel bus drivers! Weird to have such surly rude people on a big tourist route? Like something from the jurassic age. 😉

Anyway I digrees – I was walking through the Fun Houses and Ghost Trains and bars of Bowleaze to the Jordan Hill Roman Temple – a temple to an unknown god seemingly guarded by two ravens – or were they rooks, I can never tell (only recently learned how to tell jackdaws!). I stopped at a bench and decided to do some drawing and painting before I found the temple. That is where I saw these kites flying, and did a ink drawing with my vintage pen and some watercolour…it was by this time a cloudy mardy day, so the bright kites stood out against the sky.

I also did this watercolour looking back to the campsite and across the bay. You can see the Riviera, a listed 1930’s building of chalets, which John took one look at and said Pontins – and he was correct, it was a Pontins for a long time. It’s recently been on the market to sell, but didn’t get a buyer – yours for £5.5 million apparently? Fascinating building, I loved all the arches.

This piece is for sale and it won’t cost you £5.5 Million! Contact me for details, I’m also planning to do prints.

I decided to check out Weymouth in the evening after Bowleaze cove and it’s Froggy in memoriam under the bridge, literally….and get some supplies from Asda and find a proper toilet (yes Eweleaze has great showers but compost toilets!) As mentioned before, I ended up being in Weymouth til late – I wandered by the local gay bar ‘The Closet’ and it was empty! So I walked back with the moonlight, at speed for some reason.

Next day was raining, but I forgot that the weather on the Jurassic Coast is random, and very changeable. I needed to get something from Weymouth urgently (wired headphones I think, my Bluetooth ones the battery is dying) and went in. The Pleasure Pier seems to be a car park? I wasn’t that impressed with the seaside bit of Weymouth, it’s really tatty as is the Pavillion. The small art shops are interesting…and some of the large buildings say to me ‘artist studios/art center’ – the area could be a centre of arts, rather than/as well as Donkey Rides (yes they are still doing those!).

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But then the weather stopped raining/drizzling, I found some headphones and I turned tail for the coast….I went back past the campsite and a meal of popcorn on a blowy headland (made a change from the fog), to check out Osmington Mills and the Smuggler’s Inn with images of a nice drink/meal in a nice location….

Dashed by the soon to be familiar ‘Booked Up Even For Drinks’ signs – COVID really has killed the pub. Pubs are places you should be able drop into, unannounced. Remember that? Not ones where you have book via an app or days in advance just to get a drink! What happened to spontaneity?

So I went to the lonely small bay by the Inn with a scramble down to the beach and did some artwork of the waves crashing in over the rocks in gouache. I got a cheap Simply Daler gouache set from Poundland which was surprisingly good and revitalised my love of gouache – this is a mix of posh W&N pro gouache I had and the Daler.

Also after that viral video of the guy balancing rocks, I found balanced rocks everywhere I went – and someone had been busy on this beach as well. I drew them in fountain pen and graphitint – with the ever present P&O cruise ship parked off Weymouth. Quarantine?

I then had a fast scamper back to the Farm several miles along the coast so I could get some food! They do serve til 9pm, and the shop opened til 9.30pm, and the restaurant around same. So not that bad, but not the meal I hoped for…a jurassic failure I guess (I need to stop with the puns, this isn’t a concrete schoolyard 😉

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After 3 nights I decided to move on to Lulworth, hopefully Durdle Door if they have space. As a backpacker with a small tent I’m hoping that they’ll be able to fit me in somewhere! So I decide to walk up to the White Horse, but avoiding the horribly busy single track exit from the Farm – I caused a traffic jam when I did that the previous day. I suspect there might be paths from the coast I could use and I’m correct, I passed an inland path when walking to Osmington Mills that’s just past the scary looking PGL place with it’s watchtowers and large fences.

(Also any B road or even A road in the area is so busy to be unwalkable, and also usually without pavement or alternative path. When the local yokels were rude to me (rare but I came across some nasty folx, like the bus drivers) I’d walk along them causing a big upset and traffic jam. Revenge!)

I was right about that path – this takes you right to the bus stop and the busy unwalkable road and onto Church Lane that goes to the White Horse. But someone had put up a sign saying ‘Footpath Closed’ at the bus stop but it wasn’t. The path was overgrown but fine. A local wanting to stop hikers?

So I eventually got to the Osmington Brown White Horse to find that paragliders were using the ridgeway as a launching point. So I stopped and did this sketch, again with the Olika or Preppy fine pens. They have quickly become every day carry pens – especially the Preppy because they don’t dry out and seem to never hard start (a hard start is when you have to try a few times before ink comes out, or shake it).

I scrambled up the hill -the hard way I later found out – up the Browny White Horse and to where the paragliders where. It’s quite vertical there! There are several barrows on top of the ridge, and a rather more sedate track down which I’d missed. So I headed back to the campsite to pack my tent.

I’d always thought of painting the view from the tent but hadn’t managed it – so actually after I had packed the bag and tent, I sat down and drew and painted the scene. It’s apparently Bran Point and White Nothe, I’d walked along some of that to get to Osmington Mills which also much be along that coast. You can see the beach I took the photos on the first night.

Like all my individual (i.e. non sketchbook) pieces, this and the watercolour of Bowleaze Cove above are for sale – contact me for details.

Next in part two: A Jurassic Jobsworth at Londis, Jurassic Parks Eating UNESCO sites, Bollywood Doodle Door and Man O War, a Dungy head and a secret(ish) bay.

• Part 1 – White Horses, Parachutes, Amazing Pebbles & Kites
• Part 2 – Man O War Went Thru The Durdle Door And Got A Dungy Head
• Part 3 – What’s a Sheep Lulworth with All MOD Cons?
• Part 4 – Mupe Bay & Great Fossils of Rock
• Part 5 – Corfe Castle & St Edward The Martyr
• Part 6 – Corfe Castle – Escape from the Model Village
• Part 7 – Swanage Around The Globe On A Tilly Whim