Here I am showcasing my photographs of favourite places in Dorset, the county where my mother was born. Click on each image to go to the full gallery of pictures…
POOLE QUAY, DORSET
I just love to sit on Poole Quay and watch the world go by - it's a great combination of working port and leisure venue...
BROWNSEA ISLAND, POOLE HARBOUR
I have a particular soft spot for Brownsea as my 4-great-grandfather John Read, a fisherman born in 1777, was recorded as living on Brownsea at the time of the 1841 census. Here is my pictorial record of a boat trip to Brownsea in August 2009.
A BOAT TRIP AROUND OLD HARRY ROCKS
Old Harry Rocks are a group of chalk stacks off Handfast Point in East Dorset and can be seen from Brownsea, Studland and even Bournemouth. We took a boat trip around the Jurassic Coast to Swanage...
CORFE CASTLE – ROMANTIC RUIN
On August 11, 2010, we visited Corfe Castle in the Isle of Purbeck, East Dorset. We didn't realise until the morning that it happened to be the birthday of children's book writer Enid Blyton, who featured Corfe as Kirrin Castle in her Famous Five books.
ARNE – RSPB NATURE RESERVE
The little village of Arne is on heathland between Poole and Wareham in Dorset and is now the home of an RSPB nature reserve
BOURNEMOUTH AQUARIUM
I took a few pictures on a visit to Bournemouth Aquarium in August 2010 - here's my favourite, an iguana
BOURNEMOUTH PIER & ARCHITECTURE
Bournemouth Pier - on a trip in August 2010 I took lots of pictures of the pier and the town's architecture...
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The Squirrelbasket 
Hi there, love this blog! Can you drop me a line, as would love to talk to you about the work i’m doing in Dorset. Thanks Emma
Great Blog. And I didn’t know about the nature reserve at Arne. I’ll try and visit next time we venture down to Dorset. Thanks for pointing it out.
Thanks, Chris.
Looking forward to more of your blog, too – just tweeted your Winter greens on the windowsill post 🙂
My family used to holiday in Dorset when I was a child and I also have fond memories of it. We used to stay at the Riviera hotel (that was later, I believe, bought by one of the holiday-camp companies… Pontins? Butlins? I can’t remember. Anyway we’d stopped going there by then.)
I have family photos of so many of the surrounding areas including Corfe Castle, Studland Dunes (where I lost many a beach-shoe!), and others. So I look forward to revisiting some of those memories via your blog and photos. Looks nice!
Thank you – I hope it does bring back memories. I am just sad that I spent so many decades NOT going there after my mother died when I was 10. I’m so glad I have “rediscovered” it now.
All the best 🙂
Did you ever come across a little place (I think it may have been a shop) that had a tiny wishing well outside, into which one dipped toy or model pixies? It wasn’t the famous Upwey wishing well. I’ve never been able to find it and it’s something I adored when I was a small child! This was in the mid to late 1950s. It had a notice with a rhyme that went something like “Dip a pixie in the well, if your wish you shall not tell, twill be the wish of the wishing well.” (Not exact, but something like that.)
That one doesn’t ring a bell with me, I’m afraid, but I did like the model village at Corfe Castle when I was a child.
Corfe is also associated with Enid Blyton, of course. I think there were more pixies around in those days!
All the best 🙂
Oh I hadn’t thought of Corfe Castle and Enid Blyton. Kirrin Castle inspiration, then?
Yes, I believe so 🙂