Kazuo Ishiguro came on with Jonathan Coe to rapturous applause.
‘I’m missing Spurs v. Real Madrid for this?’ Mr Grigg said.
‘In the literary world, Mr Grigg, this man is bigger than Pat Jennings’s hands,’ I said, showing my age and also my ignorance of 21st century football.
Mr Grigg settled back and attempted to enjoy the interview…
There are few, if any, other places in Britain that have been shaped for so long by one industry as Bridport has been by rope, net and twine. The trade probably dates back to the ninth century. Read Mr Sims detailed book and you’ll never look at Bridport and its surrounding villages in quite the same way ever again.
CAMRA hopes its West Dorset pub guide will encourage people to visit more pubs and help keep them in business. The cover shows The Boot in Weymouth, The Anchor at Seatown, The Anchor in Burton Bradstock, The Rose & Crown in Longburton, The Royal Oak in Dorchester, Shave Cross Inn in the Marshwood Vale, and The Three Horseshoes in Burton Bradstock.
YOU KNOW the scenario – you’ve arrived in a place you don’t know well and you need to find a fine pint of real ale – and a good lunch.
Here to help you around West Dorset is the new Campaign for Real Ale guide, listing all 273 pubs in the area roughly bounded by Lyme Regis, Sherborne and Lulworth.
Within the packed 64 pages are descriptions of all the pubs, their location, telephone numbers, facilities, opening hours and - most importantly- the real ales they serve.
The centre pages open out to a map of the west of the county, showing towns and villages where real ales are served, while other pages display maps of the principal towns. You won’t get lost with this guide!
One of my favourite West Dorset pubs is the very popular and traditional George Hotel in Bridport’s South Street, described in the guide as an “unspoiled oak-panelled pub at the centre of the town, attracting a mixed clientele. Can get very busy at weekends. Less than a mile from the brewery.” It serves all of Palmers’ outstanding real ales.
In Lyme Regis, the Royal Standard has a good atmosphere, another Palmers house. “Comfortable low-ceilinged 400 year old pub with beachside garden. The interior incorporates stained glass panels, depicting historic events in Lyme. Popular pub meals.”
Country pubs feature throughout, such as the wonderful Shave Cross Inn, described as a “rural thatched pub with small flagstone bar, separate restaurant and second bar in the skittle alley/function room. Caribbean flavoured food. Thatchers cider in summer.” One real ale is from the Dorset Brewing Co. [DBC] at its new Crossways home.
Near the Somerset frontier is the Squirrel Inn at Laymore, on the Beaminster to Chard road, one of those isolated pubs you would never know about, but for guides like this. ”Unexpected red brick single bar pub in the middle of nowhere, with good local trade. Reincarnation of an earlier stone-built pub. Well prepared pub food – popular steak night on Wednesdays. August beer festival and ‘Ashen Faggot’ festival in January. Garden has play area.” Those like me who like Otter Bitter should find it at The Squirrel and also a Branscombe Vale beer, with occasional guests from Yeovil and Cottage Breweries.
In many cases, pubs will serve a predictable range of real ales- often from local breweries- but sometimes from faraway places. The new updated guide gives an indication of what brands are served at which pubs- although of course that is always likely to change. You will need the West Dorset CAMRA Pub Guide as an essential companion to any future pub outings.
Buy the updated 2011 West Dorset Pub Guide by post from West Dorset CAMRA at 32 Mellstock Avenue, Dorchester DT1 2BQ.
Send a cheque for £5 [including post and packing] made payable to West Dorset CAMRA.
CAMRA members pay only £4; quote your CAMRA membership number to qualify.
Alternatively, buy a copy over the bar for only £3.99 from the following outlets:
Bridport – Palmers Wine Store and selected pubs;
Dorchester – The Blue Raddle, 9 Church Street;
Lyme Regis – Tourist Information Centre, Town Mill Brewery and selected pubs;
Portland – Royal Portland Arms, Fortuneswell;
Weymouth – Bradburys, St Edmund Street; Londis, Westham Road and the Railway Station news kiosk.
Michel Hooper-Immins belongs to the British Guild of Beer Writers, whose members share “a love of beer and a desire to see its virtues communicated more effectively.” He is a leading member of CAMRA’s Wessex Region, and his name can often be found in The Good Pub Guide.
The editor of this website also works for Watershed PR, one of whose clients is Palmers Brewery. Please note, however, that Michel Hooper-Immins is an experienced journalist who writes about all pubs and brewers in Dorset as he sees fit.
The CAMRA guide is noticed here because it is a very useful book, worth knowing about and buying. And pubs across West Dorset always do need customers!
Just this month The Bottle Inn at Marshwood closed, though it may reopen near Easter.
A view of the coast road - long since crumbled away - between Lyme Regis and Charmouth. Artist and date unknown.
Bridport-based arts and heritage specialist Crystal Johnson explains why she’d like you to share any knowledge you might have about Dorset’s historic connections with artists.
FOR CENTURIES Dorset’s landscapes have inspired authors, poets, scientists and artists.
More than 40% of the county is classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), including virtually the whole of West Dorset (click on this link for a map of the Dorset AONB).
One of the AONB’s special qualities is its “rich legacy of cultural associations”.
I am now looking for information on artists who worked in Dorset in the past and depicted land, sea or townscapes.
I am interested in all levels of detail: names, views, people’s lives… There is no pre-determined time period. I am interested in anything that might tell us about the past or form a record of our current environment for the future.
Working in partnership with Dorset’s AONB team, I am hoping to put together a comprehensive art-historical record to see where artistic interpretations can be used to pin-point and demonstrate landscape changes over time.
We want to present the cultural legacy left by visual artists who lived and visited Dorset’s AONB in a way that will inspire new ways of appreciating, understanding and managing the area now and in the future.
Although it is only at a very early stage, I hope my researches might inform a range of projects.
One of these projects could be the development of self-guided walks inspired by artists’ depictions of the landscape.
We could perhaps put together a map pinpointing viewpoints, images of artists’ work from those same viewpoints, biographical information about artists and their relationship to a particular place.
One aim would be to explore how and why Dorset’s landscapes have changed.
We would also want to give walkers relevant local historical, geographical and natural information as they progress through the countryside.
Information on local facilities such as local transport links, places to eat and other amenities would also be included to ensure that walks are well planned and easy to undertake.
I hope that research will identify views and artworks, show how suitable (or unsuitable) different locations might be, and reveal what potential there really is for informative and enjoyable walks.
It may also be possible to develop linked activities such as landscape exhibitions, work with local schools and artist-led community projects.
The range and viability of activities will be explored through the research phase, together with an exploration of potential funding sources.
So, if you can help, please do. You can contact me by email at
Crystal.johnson1@virgin.net
Thank you!
Let’s walk. Underfoot the scrunchy pea gravel scrapes and squeaks. Sudden patches of sand give relief to legs already wearied by trudging on banked and sliding stones. Look closer underfoot – individual pebbles lucent with seawater
DOWNLOADING photographs taken around Bridport over Christmas, I suddenly found myself looking twice at this one, and wondering - what is that in the sky? Could it really be a UFO?
Photograph taken near West Milton in Dorset on 28 December, 2010.
Here’s a closer look.
Closer up view of object in the sky photographed near West Milton in Dorset on 28 December, 2010.
I have to say, I don’t think it’s a UFO – it must be the moon – but I’ve never seen it in quite this guise before.
IN JULY 1953 Philip Larkin stayed at the Royal Hotel on Weymouth seafront. He came on holiday with his mother Eva and was often mistaken for her brother or husband. He didn’t seem to mind this. He enjoyed holidays, despite claiming not to, and he liked Weymouth. This is how he described the resort to his lover Monica Jones, in a letter newly published in Letters to Monica (Faber, £22.50):
“There’s a great deal here that wd delight you: the statue of George III, glaring heavily along the front, is coloured; and everywhere in the town one has only to lift one’s gaze from the garish fronts of Saxone, Melias & so on to see the pretty round shallow bow windows & the colour-washed plaster. The harbour & old town is delicious.”
Ever since it was announced back in 2001 that a huge cache of Larkin’s letters, postcards, and telegrams to Monica Jones had been found, I’ve been waiting for the chance to read some of them in book form, and now here they are.
Do they disappoint? No. There’s something fascinating or funny on every page.
After Larkin’s return from Weymouth to Belfast, he wrote again to Monica about how he and his mother had walked to Thomas Hardy’s ‘Mellstock’.
“Hardy played a part in my parents’ courtship, & it astonishes me to hear her repeat snatches of his poems she learnt simply to please my father – We kissed at the barrier, for instance (as apparently they always did). Of course my father was grabbing the books as they came from the press, in the nineteen-hundreds.
“O frigid inarticulate man!”
Hardy is discussed again and again. In 1955, now in Hull, Larkin meets a “Botany prof. … called Good” – described as “not very bright”. The notes don’t say, but I’m sure this must be Ronald Good, who published a book on Dorset flora, now revered for its thoroughness by modern environmentalists. Anyway, Larkin is not put off by his dimness because it turns out that Good was born and brought up in Dorchester and “HE OFTEN SAW HARDY WALKING ABOUT”. And Good told Larkin a “striking” story about Dorchester:
“…after Dunkirk, Dorchester was full of soldiers, lying about exhausted all about the grass verges of the streets, sleeping it off. During these two days, a meeting was held at the Hardy statue to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth (2 June 1840) – with the soldiers lying around snoring. He saw it as ‘This England’ – NS & N [New Statesman & Nation, as it then was] – but I see it as pure Hardy.
“How he’d have felt it!”
Letters to Monica is not officially published until October 20 but you can buy it now for nearly half-price on Amazon and I can’t recommend more strongly that you do.