Upton House – captive flowers and wild fowl

Upton House in Poole, Dorset – now the setting for a small country park

My childhood holidays in the late 1950s and 1960s were spent in Upton, a suburb on the northern edge of Poole in Dorset. My mother was born in Poole and Upton was where her mother and sister still lived in those days.

But Upton House was unknown to me until a few years ago, as it was in private hands. In fact my cousin now tells me that when she was little the local lady of the Upton manor would go around distributing largesse to poor families like ours!

In this blog post I intended just to show the pictures I took of the lovely flowers in the walled garden and some of the wildfowl you can see from the shore at the bottom of the garden, but

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Around Bournemouth by open-top bus…

You get up close and personal with buildings on an open-top bus…

On a day trip to Bournemouth a few weeks ago, we decided to take a tour on the red Citysightseeing open-top bus. We usually do this when visiting a new place, to get ourselves orientated, but on this occasion we had already been to Bournemouth several times in the past.

The tour gave us a new perspective and I was able to snap what I think are some great

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The secret gardens of Compton Acres

The grand Italian garden at Compton Acres, Poole, Dorset

OK, I know, they aren’t really a secret, but the gardens at Compton Acres, at Canford Cliffs between Poole and Bournemouth, were new to me, even though I have visited Dorset so often in the past.

The 10 acres, in a little valley, feature many

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Plain sailing in traffic-free Weymouth

Signs of London 2012 in Weymouth…

The London 2012 Olympics almost passed me by – I was busy at work for the beginning and away on holiday at the end. I enjoyed the clever opening ceremony on TV, and saw the wonderful gold medal performances by Nicola Adams in the boxing and Jade Jones in the taekwondo on TV in our hotel. And I stayed up late to watch Tom Daly’s bronze in the high diving. But that was it, really.

Except that I CAN claim to have been in Weymouth during the Olympic sailing events. Long before we found out that the sailing was going to take place there, we had

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Walking with Mary Anning’s ichthyosaur…

A drawing of Mary Anning's ichthyosaur, used to illustrate a paper by Everard Home in 1814

My 1969 Hamlyn guide to Prehistoric Animals

OK, I know that’s a ridiculous headline, as an ichthyosaur was a fish-like reptile with no legs, but I wanted to draw the comparison with the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs and its latest Planet Dinosaur…

There are so many “new” prehistoric creatures these days and I can no longer keep up with all the names. My reference guide as a child in 1969 was Prehistoric Animals by Barry Cox and I could probably still identify 80% of the species illustrated, if I spotted them in the wild. That’s a Stegosaurus and an Ankylosaurus on the cover…

In Mary Anning’s time (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) things were even simpler – and it must have been so exciting, naming the first fossils found.

As of last month, I have now seen Mary Anning’s ichthyosaur fossil in the flesh (if you know what I mean) – but I am so kicking myself because I didn’t take a picture!

I hadn’t realised at the time that the ichthyosaur isn’t usually at Mary’s home-town museum in Lyme Regis, Dorset, but has been brought back from the Natural History Museum in London for a couple of months to celebrate the 200th anniversary of her find – on Mary Anning Day, September 24.

A portrait of Mary Anning with her dog Tray. A landslide from the blue lias cliffs killed Tray in 1833 - and almost killed Mary, too...

Mary Anning was

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The Cobb at Lyme Regis, Dorset

The Cobb at Lyme Regis, Dorset

Meryl Streep - and the Cobb at Lyme Regis - feature on the cover of The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles...

I recently visited Lyme Regis, right on the western edge of Dorset where it meets Devon, a county Lyme seems to gravitate towards, rather than looking back through masses of green countryside towards the east of its own county.

I went there hoping to look for fossils, thinking of my childhood heroine Mary Anning, but in September 2011 it’s the 200th anniversary of her ichthyosaur find, so I will leave it until later to blog more about her and about fossils.

Instead, I will look this time at the Cobb, a harbour wall that featured in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and more recently in John Fowles’ book The French Lieutenant’s Woman – it was made even more memorable by the image of Meryl Streep standing, windswept, on the said wall in the movie.

I bought an old

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The quarterjack of Wimborne Minster

The smart grenadier of Wimborne Minster

This little man in a red coat is easily overlooked but I spotted him on a recent trip to Wimborne, a lovely little East Dorset market town I used to visit a lot as a child, since my grandfather lived there.

The town lies where the rivers Stour and Allen meet and its full name is Wimborne Minster – minster meaning an important church, although the word originally came from the Latin word for monastery. More pictures and a bit of history further down this post…

But to return to the little man

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The gardens of Kingston Lacy…

Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne, Dorset

Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne in East Dorset, has a bit of an ancestral connection for me, although sadly not with the wealthy Bankes family, who owned the great house for more than 300 years.

My 3-great grandfather was a woodman here in the 19th century. For this reason I have put a gallery of Kingston Lacy pictures in my blog’s “ancestral places” section and this is just a short post to point to it.

Agapanthus on a sunny August day in the garden at Kingston Lacy

Today Kingston Lacy is run by the National Trust.

Please click here to come with me on a walk through the gardens on a very hot and bright August day.

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Dream machines on Poole Quay

A pair of magnificent Honda Goldwings...

I am just back from a stay in Poole, Dorset, and have many scenic pictures to share, but I thought I would throw in this little post about the Tuesday night motorbike get-togethers on Poole Quay.

Bike night on Poole Quay, with Brownsea Island in the background...

The events are held from April until

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A wildflower scramble at Badbury Rings

The approach to Badbury Rings, near Wimborne in East Dorset, in August 2011

Last week (August 1) I was in Dorset and without any planning in advance I found myself going for a walk around the Iron Age hill-fort of Badbury Rings.

Agrimony at Badbury Rings

As well as its archaeological value, the area is home to a dozen or so orchids – not

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