Welcome to the Polar Bear Winter Festival! I’ve written two posts a week for years and now, to celebrate winter because I am, after all, a polar bear, I’m doing an extra post every week until Christmas on the joys of the cold, the snow, the ice, some freezing northerly places I’ve been – and yes, some Christmas things. It’s not Blogmas – I’ve wanted to do it for years but I don’t have the time, imagination or material for twenty-four posts in a row but it’s something extra for the season.
In fact, this first post of the festival is a Christmas one: it’s 20 things to do in Dorset this Christmas. Not all of them are Christmas-themed, actually, just as this festival isn’t, so it’s the Polar Bear Winter Festival on a slightly larger scale.
1) Steam and Lights on the Swanage Railway
Swanage Railway isn’t running its usual Santa Special – not very pandemic-friendly. Instead, it’s running some really fun special trains. If you read my post last year on the Watercress Line’s Steam Illuminations, it’s similar to that. It’s a round trip from Swanage to Norden and back again on a train that’s absolutely covered in lights, inside and out. Not only is the train a light show, it seems there’s more to see along the way and the stations are lit up like a Victorian Christmas, only with 21st century lighting rather than wispy gas lights. It looks absolutely spectacular and I for one will be going down to Norden one evening to take photos of it with Corfe Castle lit up in the background.
One note on practicalities: they’re still following some restrictions, ie you book tickets in clumps of tables, so a table for two or four and don’t share a table with strangers, which makes it very expensive for a single person. It’s running at weekends starting 27th November until New Year’s Eve plus all week Christmas week except Christmas Day and Boxing Day and although some trains are sold out, they’re running 17:15 – 18:15 or 19:15 – 20:15.
2) Bournemouth Alpine Market and Christmas Tree Wonderland
Every town over about ten inhabitants has a Germanic Christmas market these days and Bournemouth’s is worthy of a mention because it also has Christmas Tree Wonderland, where the Lower Gardens have been transformed with dozens, if not hundreds, of illuminated trees. I’ve been a couple of times before. It’s free to enter but if you have a small child, they are going to want an illuminated balloon. Let’s be honest, I want one. Don’t miss the glittering LED waterfall by the steps up to the Pavilion; it’s a small thing but it’s one of my favourites. Last time, there was a tunnel of lights for your perfect Instagram photos too, and of course the giant singing tree. Once you’ve ambled through all the trees, you’ll find yourself in the market which is up around the Square, for your usual assortment of crafts, gifts and seasonal foods.
It’s open between 19th November and 2nd January and recommends coming before 5pm or after 8pm when it’s quieter.
Oh yeah, and you’ll pass by the ice rink and Alpine bar on your way. There used to be a permanent ice rink around here somewhere. Apparently it closed in 1991 which was enough time for me to be aware of it but then I always skated at Icetrax at Tower Park which closed in about 1996. Both are much-lamented. Bournemouth used to use one of the big back halls of the BIC as a seasonal ice rink but these days they do it outside. It’s not a huge rink but at least it’s real ice and there are skating aids for those who are less confident on the ice. You book a session for an hour and there are deals for families and toddlers.
When you’ve finished skating, you can head to your apres-ski Alpine bar for some hot chocolate or mulled wine – or beer or cocktails or whatever you’d get in an ordinary bar – overlooking the ice and the trees.
Open between 18th November and 3rd January.
4) Percy the Park Keeper’s Winter Wander Trail at Kingston Lacy
We’re getting into nature with this one. As you may guess from the name, it’s aimed at small children and it’s a self-guided trail around National Trust property Kingston Lacy’s winter wander trail learning about animals and nature. I’m a big fan of children learning about nature and about people appreciating the outdoors when it’s cold as well as when it’s warm, so I think this would be a great half-day out. Entrance to Kingston Lacy is free if you’re a NT member and the pack costs £2 on the gate.
For adults, there’s an illuminated trail that they’re trying to keep a bit quiet by not including it on their events page. It may not be quite as spectacular as Ignite in 2020 but I daresay it’ll be a similar sort of thing: a mix of LEDs and fire, dioramas, light trees, decorations and so on. There’s an extra cost for this, although NT members get a discount.
Percy’s trail is open 4th December – 3rd January except Christmas Day and the lights are on 3rd-5th December and then 8th December to 2nd January.
5) Snowsports at Snowtrax and Dorset Snowsports Centre
Both of these places are open all year round but it’s in winter when you really feel the urge to take to the slopes. If you ski or snowboard, here’s somewhere you can do it in Dorset. If you don’t, they both offer lessons. Both have ringoing – sliding down the slope in a huge rubber ring, Snowtrax also offers skibobs, a kind of tricycle with skis instead of wheels, and DSC offers sledging and swiss bob, a sort of minimalist sledge.
I personally prefer Dorset Snowsports Centre – it’s where I learned to snowboard, after a fashion, in 2010 – because their surface is a kind of giant plastic carpet. Snowtrax’s is a grid and although I’m sure it’s perfectly safe, I’m haunted by one of my instructors telling me that “anything that can go into one of those grids – a wrist, an elbow, a hand – can be broken”. Other than that, I think Snowtrax is actually probably better. If the slope isn’t actually bigger, it looks and feels it and instead of crashing into a barrier at the bottom, it suddenly slopes upwards like a ramp to slow you down. Snowtrax also has an Alpine bistro for warming up after your snowsports and an Alpine Adventure Park, or adventure playground. But DSC is on Warmwell Holiday Park and so there are lots of other activities available, although how many are open to non-residents, I’m not sure.
6) Rudolph’s Reindeer Roundup! at Durlston Country Park
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what this actually involves. Durlston Country Park is a pleasant couple of miles’ walk from Swanage, or it has its own car park if you don’t fancy a nice coastal walk, and it centres on Durlston Castle, which is actually a restaurant built in eccentric style in 1887 and still houses the cafe, visitor centre and gift shop for the park. The original owners, John Mowlem and George Burt, were apparently interested in science because if you go for a circular walk around the castle, you’ll find a giant stone globe and endless carved tablets with facts and statistics on them.
The description says that “Santa’s cheeky reindeer are hiding around the park! Can you help find them all? You might just win a prize…” so I assume it’s a self-guided walk around the country park looking for reindeer. What form the reindeer take, I don’t know. Probably not live ones, but as I said earlier, I do like a nature trail for children and getting outside in winter so if I can fit it in, I might go and have a nose around this one. It’s quite a late one; it doesn’t open until December 18th and it closes again on January 3rd.
7) Christmas at the Tank Museum
The Tank Museum is the world’s biggest collection of tanks and armoured vehicles, so if 20th century military history is your thing, this is the place to go. We’ve already missed the Dorset Christmas event on the weekend of 27th-28th November, which features Santa arriving in a tank and greeting visitors around the museum (no grotto: plague), a local craft fair and live – probably 40s-themed – festive music – but their Frank on a Tank Elf Trail is free and runs from 27th November to 3rd January.
8) Christmas Lights and Reindeer Experience at Winfrith
I love Winfrith. It’s kind of the industrial heartland of Dorset in the middle of wild countryside. It’s now in the process of being decommissioned but Winfrith was home to several experimental – experimental! – nuclear reactors. The old nuclear site is now the Dorset Green Technology park, it’s home to Dorset Police HQ and it’s where the 999 call centre is based. By the way, if anyone from Magnox is reading this, I would love to visit the nuclear site and write a glowing review of all the excitement there.
My point is that there’s some unexpected stuff at Winfrith and I didn’t expect a Christmas event to appear there. But Nutley Farm is holding their own Christmas light trail complete with live reindeer between 26th November and 2nd January, plus festive food and drinks in the barn and an elf hunt. There are four friendly reindeer you can meet and feed, under proper supervision, and you can have an official photo on Santa’s sleigh with the reindeer.
9) Pantomimes
There are probably hundreds of local pantomimes across Dorset but the big ones are Beauty and the Beast at Poole Lighthouse, Peter Pan at Bournemouth Pavilion, Aladdin at Weymouth Pavilion and Sleeping Beauty at Wimborne Tivoli. I’m a semi-regular at Poole and that one’s usually very good. I’ve been to Bournemouth once and that was also good. I’ve never been to Weymouth and I went to Wimborne once, where they treated it more like a Serious Play (With Silly Costumes) but that was three or four years ago so I have no idea what the 2021 one will be like.
10) Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at Christmas
The BSO is Dorset’s finest orchestra and it’s another tradition to go and see them at Christmas, although it’s been a decade and a half since I’ve actually done it. They’re based at Poole Lighthouse but you can also catch them this year in Weymouth, Portsmouth, Exeter and Cheltenham over the Christmas period. I’ll be at the Baroque Christmas concert, except I’ve got a virtual ticket because plague – oh yes, there are virtual tickets available! They’re also doing a fun Christmas crackers concert and a tradition singalong carol concert. Christmas music – as in carols and orchestral, not “X-Factor reject cash grab with added jingle bells” – have always been an important part of the season for me, as a former school band and choir member, and I’ll be glad to have some festive music back this year.
11) Christmas in Dorchester
Dorchester is Dorset’s county town, its little capital, so it’s about time I caught up with Christmas events over there! The new cultural centre of the town is Brewery Square, which opened about in 2012 as a redevelopment of the old Eldridge Pope brewery. Illuminations at Brewery Square starts on 27th November – the website seems to imply that it’s a one-evening thing but I’m pretty confident the lights will stay on throughout December. There’s also ice skating (on synthetic ice, which they say is more eco-friendly than real ice and “don’t be put off by previous synthetic rink experience”) between November 27th and January 2nd, except Christmas Day. There’s a Christmas Trail between December 4th and 24th, craft activities on the 16th and a brass band on the 2nd, to say nothing of the Shire Hall Christmas Market on the weekend of 11/12th December, Christmas Afternoon Tea between 29th November and 31st December and the Mellstock Band Christmas Frolics on the High Street – I’m particularly tempted by that last one as I was in a Baroque music group led by one of the band once upon a time. One photo exists of those times and it’s not of me.
12) Pick up a hot chocolate from Chococo
Is this strictly Christmas? No, it’s just my favourite chocolate shop. And no, this isn’t sponsored or an ad, although if you’re reading this, Chococo, can we collab?
Chococo is a little local business which makes tasty chocolate. That is, I’m sure their posh chocolates are delicious but I’m not into those. I love the chocolate dinosaurs and pirate coins from the Swanage shop; I have a tube of their Advent calendar chocolates which I’ll be eating straight from the tube every day rather than putting them in my calendar and I once stopped for hot chocolate on my adventure with Tom in 2016. If you’re not in Dorset (well, why are you reading this?) they also have branches in Winchester, Exeter and Horsham.
You can buy online, buy chocolate in the shop or go to the cafe. Even back in 2016, for some reason Tom and I sat outside. He had chilli hot chocolate and I had orange hot chocolate. You can take your pick of seven different chocolates for it, plus a Chocpresso and then you can make it orange, chilli, cinnamon, cardamom, salted caramel or ordinary caramel-flavoured on top of that. There’s nothing more Christmassy than a flavoured hot chocolate, except a chocolate fondue, sundae, milkshake, ice cream or brownie. Tom and I are unlikely to go to Swanage this year because we’ve already done that, but I might well get myself there by myself one weekend for a few dinosaurs and another orange hot chocolate.
13) Handmade for Christmas, Sturminster Newton
The Workhouse Chapel in Sturminster Newton is a kind of warehouse for hand-made stuff in North Dorset. It’s a gallery, a studio and it does workshops. And the lady who runs it is opening it for Christmas for ten weeks. Yes, it’s been open since October 16th, in an attempt, I think, to make up for last year. It’s packed full of makers. There’s wool and silk, glass and iron, wooden tables and vintage-style ceramics. I think it’s going to be a great place for some Christmas shopping, a bit like a Christmas market but indoors and it’s always good to support small local businesses like all the creators.
14) Lyme Regis Christmas Tree Festival
We’re finally going out to West Dorset, because it’s all too easy to forget things happen in Dorset outside the Poole/Bournemouth/Christchurch conurbation and Purbeck. And who doesn’t like a Christmas tree festival? I’m going to be honest, I have no idea what Lyme Regis’s Christmas Tree Festival is like but my mum’s school did a tree at their local church and my Guides did it once at our local church and I imagine it’ll be a bit like that – go in ready to vote for your favourite. It’s in the Baptist Church between Friday 17th and Sunday 19th December. There’s also Christmas at the Town Mill, which appears to be a craft market, held between December 15th and January 2nd and there’s carols around the tree on Broad Street at 7pm on December 23rd. I think Christmas by the sea would be very pleasant.
15) Charmouth Christmas Day Fancy Dress Swim
If you want to start Christmas Day with a quick icy cold wild swim, then Charmouth is for you. A quick icy cold wild swim in a Santa costume – or whatever costume you like. A wetsuit for me, please. A really big thick warm wetsuit. Joke, I will be at home in a fleece jumper shaped like a Christmas pudding, eating Quality Street and looking at the chocolate orange from my Christmas stocking but not eating it just yet. A freezing cold swim will be a nice refreshing start to a day that you’re probably going to spend stuffing your face. If I could start Christmas Day with a swim at my local pool, that might well be a tradition I started to incorporate. This one meets at 10.30 on the beach at Charmouth ready for the swim to start at 11am – and be over at 11.01, unless anyone’s feeling particularly hardy.
16) Illuminate at Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens
More lights! I’ve not been to Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens but I hear they’re quite subtropical and although it’s closed in winter, you can also combine a visit to the Swannery the rest of the year, where they manage a colony of mute swans. Our school adopted one when I was eight or so, and they opted to name it Snowy. Anyway, the Swannery is closed for the winter but the Subtropical Gardens are open and are holding a light trail. I know there are already a few lights on this list but I think the backdrop of this one will be quite a novelty in chilly non-tropical Dorset.
17) Christchurch Priory Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols
Have I mentioned that I like music at Christmas and that I prefer the carols? Christchurch Priory is a big chunky Norman church, which survived Henry VIII by a plea from the locals and a bit of admin to turn it into a parish church. Yes, I’m fighting the urge to call it a chonky boi. If you’re after a religious service (December 19th and 21st, 6.30pm) and a lot of proper carols, I don’t think Dorset has a better setting for it, except possibly the Festival of Lessons and Carols on December 19th at Sherborne Abbey, another Henry VIII-survivor turned parish church, although with a spectacular Gothic fan vaulted ceiling – no chunky Norman about Sherborne. Pick your favourite ecclesiastical architecture, or pick from the Hampshire border (Christchurch) or the Somerset border (Sherborne) if that’s more relevant.
Corfe Castle is an awesome castle at the best of times, a medieval hunting lodge, for a given definition of “lodge” vs “castle” (it’s a castle), knocked down by Oliver Cromwell in 1646. It’s worth a visit all year round and also worth seeing from a bit of a distance against the backdrop of the Dorset countryside.
For Christmas, they’ve got a few things going on. At weekends throughout December there’s a firepit, hot drinks, toasted marshmallows and a Lord of Misrule taking visitors around the castle and entertaining them, and every day there’s a Days of Christmas quest around the ruins. As an NT member who can go for free, I think I’ll almost definitely be popping in if I can find time – and then hanging around long enough to see the steam train come by in the dark.
I think this is my dad’s favourite Christmas tradition. Everyone loves a garden centre and when you’ve had your fill of buying decorations and bird food, you’ll find a handful of reindeer round the back. They sit quietly in their pen during the day, eating hay, and taking in the adoration with complete indifference and I think they go somewhere more comfortable for the night. There are “I’ve seen the reindeer at Stewart’s” badges available – to adults as well as kids, as my dad’s Christmas jumper will attest. Santa will also be at his grotto. Word of warning: there are three Stewart’ses. I’ve seen the reindeer at Wimborne and I assume they’re also at Christchurch and Fareham.
If you do see the reindeer, listen out for the clicking. Something in their ankles click so they can identify harmless other reindeer during the polar night and know who not to run away from. Footsteps and clicking, it’s just Rudolph wandering around. Footsteps and no clicking, that’s a wolf or a bear or some predator, run! Little reindeer trivia I can never resist handing out, there.
20) Blandford Yuletide Festival
And finally – and this is tomorrow, Friday December 3rd – there’s the Yuletide Festival in Blandford, if you’re up for another trip to North Dorset. Blandford Forum, to give it its full and never-used name, is a small market town and Yuletide takes place in the market square and the churchyard. There’s a lantern parade, the lighting of the town’s Christmas tree, carol singing and a funfair behind the Crown Hotel. There used to be fireworks but for the environment – and more likely – because of complaints about scary noises – there will be a couple of laser light shows instead this year. The craft stalls and Santa will be there both Friday and Saturday.