To Portland

Following on from our adventures getting to Poundbury noticed at reference 1, and the goings on alluded to at the end of reference 2, I come to our day in Portland with my Canadian cousin, stopping over with her husband in Portland on their way to the Norwegian fiords. I can't presently find the cruise in question at reference 3, but I am pretty sure that it started at Fort Lauderdale and involved Rotterdam as well as Portland. Perhaps, like Micorosoft used to do with their calendar when it was first invented, they delete past events. A practise, I was pleased to find, was not kept on by Samsung on my telephone, the present home for my calendar.

Up on the day for breakfast in the first floor restaurant overlooking the square, where I was able to renew my aquaintence with red grapefruit. BH might have had something involving avocado and poached eggs, but I probably had some more lardy.

We also had time to inspect the scene outside, untroubled by litter, parking meters or yellow parking lines. Not many litter bins either, although BH did come across one a bit later. I wondered about the pub sign, which I remembered as having included a painting of the head of our Queen, at the time the Duchess of Cornwall. A memory which is not supported by either Bing or Google and which is politely taken to pieces by Gemini: the start of his offering is snapped above. But worrying that I have such a clear memory of the head in question, complete with silly, sloping hat. Perhaps I have moved it from somewhere else?

Consulting the archive, lots of Poundbury at volume 3 (reference 5), rather less at volume 4. But the only shot which might have helped, copied above from reference 6, was taken before the pub sign was installed. Or the statue of the Queen Mother. On the other hand, I was reminded of Dorset Wine of reference 7 who survived to be visited on the present occasion. I wondered how they managed with a well stocked Waitrose across the square, but perhaps wine tastings and deliveries to country gentlemen makes the difference. They still sell cigars, although they explained that the rules concerning such are quite complicated: very roughly speaking, sale yes, promotion no.

We went on to wonder why nobody else had built a Poundbury in the twenty years or so since. Maybe the place was just too expensive - too much land and too much fancy building - for a regular housing estate. Plenty of background at reference 4.

Drive to Portland and find our way to Portland Castle where we make our rendezvous. With the additional entertainment of a good number of mostly mature people taking a morning dip in Portland Harbour. I think a sauna was involved too.

Portland Castle itself being declined, we made our way up to the view point from which correspondents watched the yachting part of Past Master Blair's Olympics. That, the big tent and the Iraq war being his legacy - after so much hope in his early days?

We also talked about all the many versions of vertigo and claustrophobia knocking about, about how they only seem to kick in, for any particular person, in particular circumstances. This being of interest to me as I do suffer from vertigo quite often and have suffered from (mild) claustrophobia (in commuter trains) in the past.

From the Castle to the Museum, the car park of which I remembered having parking in before, a car park which also serves the quarry above and the curiously named Church Ope below. I think we visited the former but not the latter.

The museum made much of its connection with Marie Stopes, whom I had not realised was a successful scientist, unusual for a woman of her time, as well as a campaigner. But it is explained that she actually died in Dorking, not far from Epsom, rather than in Portland. That aside, it was a good local museum, with lots of interesting stuff. We shall be back. Maybe we will even make it to Church Ope.

Fossils to spare for using for the coping of walls.

A Portland stone coffin, with broken lid. For a small Roman.

I did not get to find out what sort of institution this piece of equipment came from.

Reeve staffs. A country version of the tally sticks once used by the Exchequer, which last, as I recall, Pepys knew all about. And lots more, most of which we did not get to.

But we did get to the Trinity House pillar at the end. I associate to the sea mark on the top of Ashey Down, noticed in these pages from time to time, for example at reference 10, when not surrounded by dangerous cows. Dangerous sand bank off-snap to the left, marked by breakers and known as the Shambles.

The Lobster Pot café, which we have used in the past, perhaps under a different name, was crowded and expensive, so we made our way back across the island to the Little Ship of reference 2. The beer was on but the food was off, so we lunched off the remains of the picnic from the day before, which served well enough.

In the margins, I climbed up the bank of Chesil Beach behind, from the top of which was a fine view - south in the snap above - although I had forgotten that climbing up shingle was hard work and getting down was tricky. Better when one was younger and could do it in sliding jumps.

And north.

And a busy plant at the bottom.

Google Images seems quite clear about it. Sea Beet, aka Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima, aka Sea Spinach or Wild Spinach. No accident that it looks like chard or something of that sort.

On a single leaf, given a clue about where it came from, he confirms himself, adding the information that:

'... Spotted Markings: The small brown spots or tracks visible on this specific leaf are likely evidence of leaf miners, such as the larvae of Pegomya flies, which are common pests for both wild and garden beets...'.

He had also said that the stuff was edible, but maybe picking it from such an important place is forbidden.

From there to the bus stop noticed at reference 2 and from there back to Poundbury, in time for a timeout before our next engagement. Most unusual for me to have more than one in one day these days; not so unusual for BH who is busier in that way. Time also to take in the new style pillar box; a new style which has punched through to Dorset. Note also evidence of children playing behind: children do exist in Poundbury, it is more than a retreat for us older people. More evidence of same in the (mainly) young staff of the Duchess of Cornwall, some of whom actually lived nearby, and some of whom had accents to match.

Given the light lunch, I thought that pie was the order of the evening, taken with a little damp vegetable. Not bad, but I am not sure that I don't prefer the Pukka pies to be had from the better sort of chipper. Not to mention the rather larger pies to be had from the chipper at Brading on the Isle of Wight. Almost too much for me these days, with no sea swimming to sweat them off.

In the margins, I was amused by an earnest conversation between some young girls, unseen but perhaps in their late teens, about how life on earth was pretty much played out for us humans and we needed to find a way to found colonies elsewhere, with the Moon and Mars seemingly being the only candidates. From their accents, they were native English - while I associate fascination with Noah's Ark fantasies of this kind with the land of the free, that is to say the USA: perhaps something to do with the high density of true believers there. A correspondent told me afterwards that this was almost certainly prompted by a recent film, for which I had seen advertisements on the tube and elsewhere, without having a clue what it was about. And having now forgotten the name of the film.

Bing turns up a short called 'Mars Colony' from 2020, to be found at reference 14. But that does not seem right. Pushing a bit harder, I get a list of ten films about space colonisation, but none of them are very recent. Harder still and I get to the very recent 'Project Hail Mary' of reference 15, which is certainly the one for which I have seen advertisements. But not quite right either. So it looks like that I shall never know what the background to this earnest conversation was. Had we been sitting in range, I suppose I could have joined in.

PS 1: regular readers may remember that I was a long serving member of the Filofax army, having joined up in the early 1960s, only deserting the colours for the telephone perhaps fifty years later. I still have the binders, complete with useful maps and such like, tucked away for posterity. A thought probably partly prompted, as well as by my opening remarks about telephones above, by my continuing inability to consult my diary and have a conversation on the telephone at the same time. An inability which is, from time to time, tiresome - but not to the point of my sitting down and doing anything about it.

PS 2: you can read all about tally sticks at reference 11. A lot of those held by the Exchequer got burnt in some fire at the Palace of Westminster, but some are to be found at the National Archives at Kew, some of which were got out for inspection in the margins of some important visit or other. As I recall, we were not polite enough to take a proper interest in them.

[Not like the more or less dead shipyard I remember once visiting at Belfast, at the crack of dawn, at all. See below]

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/to-faketown.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/no41.html. 

Reference 3: https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/gb.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=poundbury.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/12/charley-boy.html.

Reference 7: https://dorsetwine.co.uk/.

Reference 8: https://portlandky.org/.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Stopes.

Reference 10: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/08/sea-mark.html.

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_stick.

Reference 12: https://www.pukkapies.co.uk/. Pies, glorious pies! I associate to a correspondent once telling me that pies and the various shops which sold them hot were a proper topic of conversation when taking a few beverages in Barrow-in-Furness, the place where they used to build submarines. Maybe they still do from time to time.

Reference 13: https://www.baesystems.com/en-uk/locations/barrow-in-furness.

Reference 14: https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/browse/entity-3216afe4-1def-4a8c-ad23-ca39e3dc4fcb.

Reference 15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary_(film).