Or… another chance for me to inflict my holiday snaps on the world

Anyway, the original plan on Tuesday was for the kids to go swimming at Lulworth Cove afterwards, but the weather was a little miserable for that.

The revised plan was that Jayne would drop us off at Lulworth Cove and then go off to the car park at Durdle Door for some peace and quiet, to read her book and have a nap.

In the meantime, Charlie had a cave to explore. Last time he couldn’t do it properly as it was dark in there. This time he was determined to go back with a torch.

But first of all there were some dangerous rocks to climb, as usual. I am so glad Jayne was not there to see this particular expedition. I know it looks risky, but I’m sure I climbed the same rocks myself 30 years ago, so its only fair they got to have a go. It was all part of our plan to try and wear the pair of them out.

The other part of the plan to get Charlie and Chrystal to wear themselves out was to let them walk the coastal path from Lulworth Cove to Durdle Door.

This is the bottom of the path. The official path actually goes just to the right and is a lot steeper and less stable but I thought the new path looked steep enough.

Charlie took the old path and Chrystal and I took the easier one, but even so by the time we were only halfway up I found myself deeply regretting almost 30 years of smoking. I had to keep stopping to take photos but lets be honest – I would have been stopping all the time anyway.

Despite the hyperventilation and fears of a coronary it was worth the effort as the views were as stunning as any we had seen before. You really do have to get up above the cove to appreciate the shape and formation of it and the only way to do that is to walk.

From the top you can really see why the whole area is a World Heritage Site and an AONB.

This is the view from the top, and what a view.

I do think that the house just to the left of Chrystal’s head must be an amazing place to live.

From this point, we went up the hill a bit to where the old path is to wait for Charlie. We figured that since he took the longer route we would have to wait for him and were waiting quite a while.

Finally he appeared from the other direction. He had beaten us by a long way and had already been down to see Durdle Door! Happy that I had a full complement of children I gave Jayne a call to find out where she was parked and we went down to meet her.

I think our plan backfired abit though – I was a lot more worn out than either of the kids were, but I did get to see the jurassic coastline from this angle…