Since we can’t go abroad at the moment – well, without risking a last-minute quarantine announcement – people are staycationing and they seem to be flocking in their millions to the south-west. I live in the south-west and this is my personal guide to Swanage.
Swanage is a small seaside town in Dorset. It’s been a fishing town and a quarrying town but it became a place of note in Victorian times, when the railway and the new pier brought the first generation of tourists to enjoy the beach and the clean sea and the warm air. Unlike Weymouth, a similar Victorian seaside resort further west, Swanage has remained small and genteel.
Getting there
Although there are car parks in Swanage, the best way to get there is to park at the big park & ride at Norden and take the steam train into Swanage. The Swanage Railway is a heritage railway run by volunteers, who started the decades-long project of restoring the line just weeks after Dr Beeching tore it up. The steam trains don’t run all year round but they’ll run during peak tourist times plus they have special steam events throughout the year. Check the website for their current timetable. In these COVID times, you have to pre-book and it seems you have to book either a table for two or four or an entire compartment which makes it more expensive than it is in normal times but at least it’s running.
Eating
I’m not a foodie and I was surprised to find I can talk about eating in Swanage at all, let alone have favourites.
My first favourite is Chococo, a chocolate house and cafe. They also have branches in Winchester, Exeter & Horsham but Swanage is the original. While they’re a cafe serving light lunches, cakes, brownies and ice cream, I’d be having the hot chocolate if I was sitting down. I can vouch for the orange one and I don’t think Tom had any complaints about the chilli one. But I go there for the chocolate, and specifically the novelty chocolate. I get a few Jurassic Coast dinosaurs and a few gold-splattered pirate coins in both sizes and if I’m in the Winchester branch, a couple of King Alfreds. They’re so pretty! Fortunately they’re also very tasty.
For food, I usually go to Deja Brew, up on Station Road. It’s a cafe, I guess, which does light lunches and cake. I adore their cheese toasties, which are always toasted to perfection – light and golden, no burning, melty cheese – and served with a very decorative side salad. They’re also the first place I’ve ever found that will do a takeaway toastie.
If they’re full, or if I’m with my parents then it’s The Purbeck Deli for me. It’s a deli. It does fresh baguettes to take away, plus the usual selection of cheeses, meat and other local produce. Their cheese baguettes are very well filled.
My parents like to go to The Fish Plaice for fish & chips. It’s the one that has a queue and my mum assures me they wouldn’t dream of getting fish & chips anywhere else. You sit in the square to eat them while enjoying the sight of tourists discovering why the locals don’t allow the gulls to be even a crumb.
Me and my mum both sit there and look wistfully at Dino’s Takeaway opposite – their fresh doughnuts are front and centre and smell amazing. Unfortunately, I don’t actually eat doughnuts.
Honourable mentions go to Haymans Bakery, which is where my parents like to sometimes get a pasty or a piece of cake, Fortes Ice Cream on Shore Road and the entire Gee Whites complex, which used to be a proper old-fashioned seaside seafood place where you selected a lobster from a tank among the tables. With the new owners and the new building, that’s long-gone but it’s still an iconic Swanage seafront all-purpose open-air eating place.
Shopping
My first stop for shopping is Natural Wonders, a rock/fossil/jewellery shop. It has an enormous amethyst geode taller than me and the skeleton of a cave bear standing by the door – neither for sale, might I add. I used to collect small gemstones but these days I seem to be gradually filling my desk with little white stone polar bears.
Second, similarly, is the Swanage Museum, opposite the fish & chip shops. It’s, as the name suggests, a local museum with information about its quarrying and Victorian past and whatnot but I pop in there for haematite rings occasionally and other bits of rock and fossil jewellery. My director used to look extremely doubtfully at the ancient shark tooth I sometimes wore to work.
Another favourite stop is Rainbow’s End. It’s the local hippie shop and there’s something like it in every town. It sells incense and rainbow-striped knitwear and black and purple velvet dresses and colourful dungarees and pots of coloured hair dye and beaded bracelets. I rarely buy anything but I like to go round and look at everything.
If you’re after rock (as in the edible seaside sticks of sugar, not the stone kind), try Leonards. It’s a seaside gift shop full of all kinds of junk but it’s where I’d go for sticks of rock and fudge and if you’re going to the British seaside, you have to have a stick of rock. Mint (pink) and fruit (rainbow stripes) are the traditional flavours but in this day and age, you’re very likely to find a huge range of flavours.
To do
And at last we get to the purpose of this post: what does one do in Swanage?
It’s a seaside resort, so enjoy the beach, first and foremost. Then you’ll always find kids crabbing off Stone Pier – catching small crabs on a string and popping them in a bucket is a perennially exciting pastime and I remember doing it myself when I was little.
You can walk out on the pier. It doesn’t have the glitz of big pleasure piers but you can fish off it or take boat trips along the Jurassic Coast or you can just read the thousands of brass plaques that form one of the principle ways of fundraising for the pier’s continuing restoration. Plenty are boring but there are some wonderful ones lurking.
If you’re after a bit more action, Swanage is something of a haven for diving and I think there are shipwrecks, an abundance of them, to explore. There’s also climbing, coasteering, kayaking and foraging nearby – for the latter two, let me recommend Fore/Adventure up the road in Studland. I’ve been out kayaking with them at least three times and they’re very good.
One of my favourite Swanage activities is to take the South West Coast Path south from Peverill Point to Durlston Country Park, which is a castle as well as a country park. It’s only just over a mile, up the Downs and through Durlston Village – look out for the sign pointing the SWCP as passing below some flats to follow the route through the trees unless you’d prefer to walk along the road.
The castle is now a visitor centre and cafe but it was originally built as… well, a restaurant. It’s a folly which was never intended for defence. It was for visitors to the estate to dine. Tilly Whim Caves, which are actually quarries, are nearby although they’ve been closed for a very long time. Below the castle is the Globe, a 40 tonne carved stone globe, surrounded by stone carvings of facts, figures and poetry, all world and globe-related. It features two smooth stones on which are still just legible the carved words “Persons anxious to write their names will please do so on this stone only” which seems to have been remarkably effective in keeping graffiti off the rest of the exhibit.
And that’s my Swanage. If you find any jewels or have any favourites, please let me know in the comments.