Worth Matravers East - Dorset

About trip

• Circular Walk: 5.83 miles
• what3words address for parking: 
• ///elections.organs.offshore

The what3words address takes you to the ‘Woodhenge’ car park (pay and display) at the edge of the village.

We walked this route anti-clockwise, heading towards Seacombe Bottom on a well marked path before joining the coast path. The track down to the coast was very muddy and slippery underfoot after rain and fairly well churned up by a herd of bullocks; definitely a ‘suitable footwear’ section!

The coast path heads towards Swanage on a, mostly, good path and passes Dancing Ledge. Dancing Ledge is a flat area of rock at the base of a small cliff and is accessible with care. The area was used for quarrying Purbeck stone and the ledge has a vertical drop into the sea which is deep enough for small ships to come right up to the ledge to be loaded.

There are multiple options for continuing the walk from here as a number of tracks turn inland from the coast to meet the Priest’s Way and you could also continue further into Swanage itself. However, we turned inland just past Blackers Hole. A track is marked on the OS map, but we missed it and ended up simply walking across the undulating field to meet up with our intended path, turning west at the top of the ridge north of the cliffs. This offered terrific views and we were pleased with our decision.

This path then intersects another going due north which we followed to the Priest’s Way and then turned west along this back to Worth Matravers and a refreshing beer in the Square and Compass.

This was a lovely walk with, mostly, easy gradients and we lost count of the number of skylarks we both heard and saw.