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What I did on my holidays – Monday morning

August 26th, 2006 · Posted by Skuds in Life · 1 Comment · Life

On Monday morning we headed straight for Portland after breakfast. Charlie loved the place on the previous trip and really wanted to return and climb more rocks. I imagine he also wanted to be able to show his sister around.

This is the pair of them climbing the big iconic rock at Portland Bill. Jayne had to stop watching long before they got to the top, but I took some photos for posterity.

On arrival I had a major fight with a pay & display machine which didn’t register a pound coin but wouldn’t return it either. I won on points when it eventually coughed the coin up, just before I reached the point of getting totally carried away and psychotic.

After the kids had climbed all the most dangerous rocks they could find they decided to try their kites out, while I wandered off on my own to have a look around the highly photogenic huts just along the coast. They are remarkable. From a distance they look like normal beach huts but they are actually quite large. A bit like the huts at Dungeness. (Do lighthouses always attract huts?)

I think that the rest of the family missed out by not coming with me.

Apart from the huts, there were some even more spectacular rocks which were too dangerous for even our two to attempt to climb them, plus some enormous rock pools and an amazing view across to the lighthouse.

By the time I got back to the field by the car park, both kites were up in the air. Chrystal was flying a Chinese paper kite which Auntie Joan brought back from China. It does not do anything more than just sit in the sky, but it is very easy to get up there – unlike Charlie’s stunt kite which I got him for his birthday.

On the first trip we had to give up when we realised that we had left the tail back in Crawley, but it didn’t seem a lot easier to get aloft with the tail in place. However, after Charlie sorted the strings out it did fly and did some stunts – mostly the stunt where it takes a nosedive and crashes into the ground at high speed after just missing someone’s head.

Apparently I had missed all the fun when the Chinese kite escaped and Chrystal chased it all across the field. A kind man managed to catch it and give it to her so she could let go again and have another chase.

With all the natural wonders around, it is a bit perverse that my favourite photo of the morning was this one of a milk crate… I just liked the way it looked like a face, or an old Space Invaders alien.

One last photo from Portland is this one of the phone box next door to the cafe. Even from a distance I could see police tape tied around it. When I got closer and went round the front I could see why. Someone had put some large rocks on the floor, balanced a car jack on them, and then cranked up the jack to try and break into the coin box. It didn’t look like they succeeded in getting any coins, but they certainly made a mess of the phone.

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One Comment so far ↓

  • E Bungle

    I was upset when I went to discover that the lighthouse was not out across the sea therefore the lighthouse keeper could not row to it as I was promised by childhood cartoons.