TIM BAKER

Aka ‘Don’t Go Camping In October!’ – Studland/Chesil Beach edition.

I knew it would be cold, but not THAT cold – 7 degrees doesn’t sound that bad, but when you are in a tiny ultralight tent wearing almost every layer you have and you’re still freezing in your sleeping bag, then it’s less like a good working trip and more like endurance. This trip went wrong in many ways – from the lack of layers which I took out when I was panicking about the ultra-heavy backpack, to the wood stove that munched twigs and fuel at high rates but didn’t actually cook anything, health issues with my legs aching at night which still puzzles the medical community, and culminating in the backpack breaking which was the last straw.

No backpack = no trip, really.

I had some unfinished business from the last trip – my hurting feet in Swanage meant I never got to Old Harry’s Rocks, and I wanted to explore Chesil Beach, and a few other things I didn’t get to. I meant to get out in September but some shady equipment sellers on Aliexpress delayed me as they ran off with my money and I had to source items like a new mattress – remember the last one died? elsewhere, which meant many more weeks waiting for it to arrive from Germany. It was just a litany of delays after delays.

Thing was, not just the temperature was against me – public transport too, as again engineering works meant I arrived in Ulwell Holiday Park late and had to put up my tent in the dark, and then later had bus chaos getting to Weymouth. Also also and the lack of light in the evenings also impacted how many pieces I could do – not four or more a day like in August; and given I was freezing at night, I couldn’t get to sleep til 2-3am at best, and meant I tended to stay in the tent when it became very warm in the morning so got up late, knackered.

The days were good – no rain, sunshine – just no cloud cover at night so temperatures plummeted.

So when I arrived at Ulwell, after making a successful meal of sausages – that’s basically all the stove is good for, sausages and steak, BBQ food that can have brief high temperatures, forget about coffee as I found the next day – and a cold night, I had to head into Swanage to look for extra layers – wasting half a day. Finding cheap shirts without the expensive ‘walking’ tag was hard before I went, and Swanage was no different – there were walking shops wanting to sell me £35-150+ base and midlayers, and the cheaper shops had gotten rid of their lighter gear like tshirts and didn’t have my size. I spent hours looking.

A charity shop to the rescue! For £17.50 I got a new merino/acrylic blend jumper and a Chelsea football shirt. Yeah I know – that caused stress later because I don’t support football (of any team) but it was a cheap polyester shirt. Polyester you say? But you are trying to be green and ethical! Well, the problem is that the cotton shirts as I found last time are too heavy and won’t dry quickly, they literally bog you down, and when they are wet they stay wet. A dangerous thing camping in low temperatures or rain. I have to say, I really found it a lot better with the poly/merino base layer combos.

I hate ‘big plastic’ but I do see that there aren’t the alternatives in some places, fabrics being one (and don’t get me started on ‘bamboo’ fabrics and not-sustainable cotton, it’s far from cut and dried). Anyway buying such things secondhand is far better for the planet.

So rather delayed, I got up to Old Harry’s Rocks along the coast with a few hours to spare, so did the gouache at the top of this post of what I now know are called The Pinnacles, and the watercolour below of Old Harry’s Rocks themselves, trying out the mixed media pad with watercolour. I wasn’t really happy with either, but then again I wasn’t 100% happy on the first day of the first jaunt either. So I decided to stay another day (cue E17) and try again tomorrow.

Looking back the watercolour isn’t too bad, but compared with the great heights of last time, it’s nowhere near those. And the mixed media paper was shiny, and so it basically ran off the paper. Not good, and a pain to work with.

Old Harry’s Rocks is a set of chalk rocks near Studland that used to link to the Needles on the Isle of Wight. You can see those in the distance on a clear day, and I did when I visited. The one at the end is Old Harry, the middle with the arch which I saw quite a few kayakers go through is No Man’s Land, and the bit before that collapsed 100 years ago is St Lucas’s Leap. So you can’t actually walk out there anymore…but I saw some treacherous people going right to the end! Not me.

The name is interesting – some say Old Harry is the devil, which is born out by the land nearby being called Old Nick’s Ground, and St Lucas’s Leap, there are loads of stories about devils leaping or hiding in remote rocks. And the headland is called Handfast Point…pagans! But some say Harry was a pirate, or a Viking. I am going with the former.

I stupidly stayed until it was quite dark. Why stupid? Well I didn’t know the area but trusted the paths to get me back – indeed I must have walked the area before, and have, and recognised part of the path, it’s quite an easy walk back to Studland Village. But in the dark rather stressful, and I had forgotten one thing: Dorset roads. The road back to Ulwell was unwalkable – I mean no pavement, no lights and many cars per hour. Scary. So I decided to take a footpath, at night over Ballard Down…a path I’d not walked before.

Quickly it turned into a cowpat quagmire, I hate when paths go into open fields in daylight, at night it’s much worse. I was using the GPS on my phone just to work out where the path went, and then over Ballard Down the marked path just became a rabbit run down a steep hill. I could see the cliffs so I knew I wasn’t probably walking over one, but that didn’t stop me stressing about that.

I arrived cold, muddy and unhappy at the campsite, and then because the campsite pub wasn’t doing food in the evenings I had to cook. The holiday park wasn’t bad – the price was very good (9.50 a night) and the pitch flat – despite the floodlights from the nearby toilets. It’s just I got a feeling they were winding down for the season so you couldn’t depend on them for food or drink as the pub didn’t do food usually in the evenings and had a really restricted (read non-gluten free) menu and rarely did lunch. Or as I found the shop didn’t have a working coffee machine either and no-one had cups!

This is when I found that twigs might cook sausages, but noodles in water – no chance unless you feed hundreds of sticks into them. I was actually scavenging these sticks from the site, so cleaning it up, very green, a public service. But lukewarm not totally cooked bland noodles what you want after a stressful walk. I found cooking with a wood stove stressful as you have no time to prepare, you have to constantly feed fuel in, but stop to look for an ingredient or do something, it goes out.

I decided to add some rice to spice things up if I had to spend all this fuel. The pot and wood stove then fell over, dumping half of my meal on the ground. I ate what was left and then had some sandwiches. Not a good day. The reason for the wood stove was that it was light and that I wanted to save money, the last trip being too expensive on food, horrendously so. But having to use takeaway food made the trip suddenly more expensive – or eat cold sandwiches all the time, I did eat a fair few actually, not wanting to cope with the drama of the stove. But when you’re cold, you want hot food!

So the next day, I ignored the coffee and went to find some locally, and being a learning person took the bus to Studland village rather than trying to walk everywhere and avoided the far too busy B road. This was far better.

I started at Middle Beach, having a nice second breakfast at the cafe there – if I’d knew it was open, I’d have gone directly there! The cafe is brilliant, it’s run by the National Trust I think, and interestingly one of the Bankes children – the family that own most of the area a bit like the Welds in Lulworth actually used to work in the cafe. I did a drawing from the cafe of Old Harry’s Rocks (at the top of the post) with the Preppy EF pen – not the Olika because again, another bad omen.

I thought I’d lost my current favourite drawing pen. It actually turned up deeply embedded in the sofa at home – but not after ordering another!

I then walked further along the coast away from Studland where I found Fort Henry – a gun emplacement and observation post built for the preparations for D-Day in 1943. King George VI, Winston Churchill, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Acting Admiral Louis Mountbatten all observed the maneuvres codenamed Exercise Smash 1 in Studland bay and around Poole, it was the largest live ammunition practice of WW2. Interestingly they were experimenting with floating tanks – a Hungarian engineer worked out how to inflate bags of air to make the tanks amphibious. Sadly they didn’t like rough seas, and six men died off Old Harry’s Rocks during an exercise, and a memorial to them is at Fort Henry.

I toyed with the idea of drawing the Fort – it really is like something from an art gallery or sci-fi film – but I saw the mention of a pill box on the beach below, and went to investigate. This is on South Beach, and after a nice ice cream at the stall there, I went and painted it with my brush pen and wash. The woman at the stall was amazed I did that in such a short time – and it’s the best piece of this jaunt.

I then went onto Old Harry’s Rocks for a go at painting them proper…I sat precariously on one of the many outcrops, and painted. And it was shit. I am not posting it here cos it is dreadful. So basically showed that more time and more planning, and less stress does not automatically mean better work. I mean even the watercolour on the shiny mixed media paper which hated watercolour and I struggled with that was better. So I moved on and did a brush pen piece of one of the Pinnacles I’d spotted the day before, that one was better. Not great, but better.

So learning my lesson I headed back to catch the bus back to Ulwell – via a pub where I wanted to eat but not only they were still doing the strange ‘order at the table from your phone’ – assuming everyone has a smartphone – and their menu took an age to appear on 2/3G – yeah no sign of wifi – and then it turned out all the meals were £15-20. No thanks. I was going to get takeaway pizza from the shop but given they had been so flaky about other stuff and warned they might close early, I went into Swanage and got a Chinese meal and ate it on the seafront.

A highlight – I ignored all the places that in August were ‘too full’ and snubbed them for basically allowing themselves to be completely booked up and tell walk-ins to get lost – and the horrible chip shops, even Harry Ramsden’s isn’t great – and went to the very Chinese I was planning to go to in August. It was quiet, and really nice, if a bit cold!

So next day I packed up and headed to Weymouth – or tried to. I couldn’t decide whether to go via Swanage and the route I went before, or back to Bournemouth via Studland where I’d taken the bus across the ferry. I decided on the Studland bus cos Google said it was quicker…well it would be, bar roadworks and a replacement minibus, and then a very slow Breezer bus back to Bournemouth which dumped us all in the centre before it got to the railway station. It was a nightmare….and while I was doing this I was trying to book a place in Weymouth.

This time I booked everywhere, great in theory if people actually a) pick up their phones (*cough* Martleaves Farm Campsite) and b) don’t have weird 24 hour limits on booking in the age of the internet and didn’t allow drop ins (looking at you Haven). Finally I found that Pebble Bank Holiday Park had space, and it was a mile or so from Martleaves and where I wanted to go near Chesil Beach. It’s also I think open all year round with a pub that was seemingly doing food. Result!

I was surprised when I arrived that not marked on the map is it is next to an army training camp and what looks like the remains of a WW2 camp next door – despite it being scrubbed from the map, the road being called Camp Road should have been a slight clue! The pongos seemed friendly enough, even with me wandering around late at night and you could walk along the Fleet lagoon to Chesil Beach and Weymouth.

I hitched my tent – this time having more time to erect it properly, as the sun was setting – but not pitch black dark as before, and went to get a meal at the Fat Badger. As I’d arrived they were playing Richard Osman’s House of Games on the TV, and I instantly loved the place. I asked if they had the chicken…they were surprised but I was so used to everything I wanted being ‘off’ at Ulwell that I wanted to check. So to recreate my youth, I had Chicken and gravy and chips – my favourite at around aged 10. The pub is ace, and does breakfasts, and has a really nice view. Recommended.

Next day I was tied, I was planning to either take a commute up via Dorchester to draw the Cerne Abbas giant, or walk down the coast to Chesil Beach – I decided to do that, and if I had time I’d go to Cerne, or do it the next day. I walked down the Fleet to the Portland bridge, a really nice walk with many walkers and dog owners. I was fascinated by the boat houses on Chesil Beach and the lagoon – so I stopped and drew one with a boat next to it. I learnt later at the Chesil Beach Visitor’s Centre that this boat was probably a Portland Lerret, rare nowadays, a fishing boat adapted to Chesil Beach.

The people on the right are paddleboarders that arrived while I was drawing, so I put them in for scale.

I walked on and got over the bridge – via the Beach Bar parodoxically in a boat yard that gave me some water. Again I’d misjudged water, thinking it would be available somewhere along the route (no the pub with the toilet at the bridge was closed!) and then onto the visitor’s centre. I got another bottle of water there, and then onto the beach.

I don’t like shingle/pebble beaches….and Chesil Beach is 18 miles of that – no way was I going to walk that – the 5 miles I did at Hyde once along the military range was enough. Walking on pebble is really tiring, much more tiring than normal walking, it seems to make any journey feel like double the length. So although I wanted to investigate the boat house I saw, I wasn’t going to walk several miles along Chesil! I did find weirdly an iron bench someone had placed there, and a large rusted metal…thing. So I painted the rusted thing. Twice. While helicopters flew constantly overhead.

It is called ‘Far Away In Time’ after the joke I kept singing after the Martha & The Muffins song Echo Beach, sang ‘Chesil Beach, Far Away In Time!’. I struggled with these, being a strange lump of metal on a beach, it’s rather abstract, and very 1930/40’s, a bit John Piper or Paul Nash or Graham Sutherland. I hated the first version, so did the second, hated that, went back to the first with graphitone pencil and acrylic ink markers and then preferred that one! I did feel like I was wasting my time…

Helicopters are a fact of life in Weymouth – the locals who endlessly complain about them where I live in London would have a heart attack. I’m guessing it’s military, or coastguard, but so frequent I’m guessing it’s training.

It was getting late, so I decided to go to Cerne Abbas the next day, so decided to get some more food as I was planning to stay a few more days and tell the Park to extend – it wasn’t busy. I got some steak to treat myself as I was sure it would cook OK, GF bread, some more cereal, and oat milk, some drinks – it was quite heavy but no biggie, I’m staying for a bit. It’s warmer now at night, so it’s better.

So I decided to go for a sunset walk before cooking the steak, taking my backpack in case I wanted to sketch anything. At which point the bolt falls off my backpack, the bolt that attaches the backpack to the frame has lost it’s nut. All plans cancelled, I have to fix this otherwise I cannot get home. So I google on my phone and find that B&Q in Weymouth is open for a few hours….and then at high speed head to the Number 1 bus at Foord’s Corner.

Which is then promptly cancelled (thanks Wessex/First buses!), and the next one, meaning I have to walk the 2 miles at speed, or do it tomorrow. I choose to do the former, and make it with 15 minutes to spare…not after getting abuse from cars, which puzzles me. I don’t know anyone in Weymouth, what’s the problem? I get some tools from ASDA which I’d forgotten to get from B&Q to help hold the bolt in place as finger tight it might happen again.

Waiting for the bus back I find out why people were shouting at me – a car drives past and shouts ‘You’re a bully!’ at me. I then realise what I’m wearing, my Breton cap which is peaked, the jumper I found in a charity shop is dark blue, the excellent surplus Navy goretex jacket (really recommended, a fraction of the price of new ones and second hand) is black with reflective strips, and I was wearing my black cargo trousers. To an idiot that weirdly knows nothing about Naval/Surplus clothing (in super military Weymouth?!) I look like a copper. I get back to the campsite sharpish, and feel rather soured on Weymouth.

Getting abused, even misplaced was not fun, during a stressful time even less so.

So I decide to abandon the trip even though I fixed the backpack I wasn’t sure if it would go wrong again. I do a ‘Viking funeral’ of all the emergency fuel I had bought as a symbolic thing about the trip and to save weight. I cooked my steak and ate some crisps with it, drank and then went to bed. Even made a rather more hot chocolate than before and finally got the water boiling but it took most of my fuel. Craneflies tried to attack, but I deflected them with the grill pan. I left myself the option of changing my mind in the morning.

I didn’t feel different – I was upset, tired, not that cold – having solved that problem but with aching hurting legs and a backpack I couldn’t rely on. Home time! Ironically I now had the camping field to myself, and it was a lovely day with a bright blue sky….but I was just fed up and bruised by the experience. I got the bus into Weymouth – a secret one called the 206 run by South West Coaches that you’d need to have real local knowledge to know about…and then while I was waiting for the train, I drew the Victorian clock tower on the seafront.

I was wondering if this was all premature, until I got to the train and a local had a go because I went to push the button – I’ve had too many times everyone just stands there dumbly. I wasn’t intending to get on, just press the button and back away but I get a mouthful about ‘letting people off first’ even though the doors hadn’t opened yet. I explained I was just pressing the button, then said ‘no need to be so rude!’ and stomped off further up the platform.

This moment sums up how I think locals feel about tourists and backpackers – only useful in high season, to be abused in low season or if they can’t make any money off them. I was fed up of being abused in Weymouth, a place that I’d previously thought to be fairly friendly (bus drivers disallowing – actually the SW Coaches guy was really friendly, so maybe it’s a More/Wessex/First grump thing). I was glad to go home. I had had enough.

And I think the work speaks for itself – last time I had 52 pieces in a week and a half and posted 48 of them. This was 6 days and I have posted 9 and haven’t done many more than that. I showed others the work and felt embarassed – it’s simply just not as good and it shows, and didn’t fulfill my objective of having more work to sell. I was right to abort the trip, in fact I was planning to do so a few days in but felt like that would be mocked that I hadn’t really tried.

I should have listened to my gut because the experience was so traumatic I stopped working on new work for a while after, and I’ve really not got into the same per-trip groove since. It wasn’t worth enduring that pain for the work I got. I learnt that although these trips are working trips and not holidays, if I make them really uncomfortable to save money or weight, then my work suffers as a result. But it’s a trade-off of what I can afford and how many trips I can make on limited money.