Set off just after 9am. My roommate, the German girl is leaving today for Oxford so that means I'll have the entire room to myself tonight. First stop is Poole, just a few minutes away. I stopped at Sandbanks where there were many yachts parked at the bay. You can also catch a ferry over to Swanage from the Poole ferry terminal. Just a brief stop and I head over to Swanage, the starting point of the Jurassic Coast. Swanage is a small coastal town in the south east of Dorset, England. The town, originally a small port and fishing village flourished in the Victorian era, when it first became a significant quarrying port and later a seaside resort for the rich of the day. Today the town remains a popular tourist resort, this being the town's primary industry, with many thousands of visitors coming to the town during the peak summer season, drawn by the bay's sandy beaches and other attractions.
I walked along the beach and then followed the coastal path towards the point where you can see the 'Old Harry Rocks' from afar. Old Harry Rocks are chalk stacks located directly east of Studland and to the north of Swanage in Dorset. The cliff is chalk, with some bands of flint, which have been gradually reduced over the centuries, some of the earlier stacks having fallen (old Harry's original wife fell in 1896), while new ones have been formed by the breaching of narrow isthmuses. Later, I turned back towards the town and bought a Dorset Apple Cake for 85p.
Then I drove to Kimmerage Bay for some fossil hunting. The rocks at Kimmeridge Bay were once the floor of a deep, tropical sea rich in pre-historic life. They formed in the Jurassic period, 155 million years ago. To access the bay, you need to enter a private land hence paying a toll and car park fee of ￡3.50. I brought my own sandwich today so I had yet another meal with a great ocean view. Here, you can walk up a hill and visit the Clayden Tower or you can choose to descend to the beach. The beach here is a mixture of sand and pebbles. The cliffs and foreshore contain a very thick sequence of Kimmeridge Clay. The cliff walls here are pretty unique where they are in layers like the pages in a book, parts of them are stones, then layers of thin mud (which felt like charcoal) follows and the fossils they contain tell a story on each page. 
Next, I head to the stunning Lulworth Cove, a cove near the village of West Lulworth, on the Jurassic Coast. The cove is one of the finest examples of such a landform in the world, and is a tourist location, with over 1 million visitors a year. On the way, I stopped briefly to look at the Corfe Castle from the car park. Arrived at Lulworth where the information centre has an exhibition detailing the rock formation on the Jurassic Coast and also fossils found in the area. Here, I tried the award winning Purbeck Chocolate Orange Ice Cream (￡1.30) which was really nice. The cove beach is actually a pebble stone beach. Unlike the stones at Kimmerage Bay which were mostly black and grey, here the pebbles are majority white or yellow. The rock walls here are also different as they are chalk walls. Nearby, is the Stair Hole, less than half a mile away, is an infant cove which suggests what Lulworth Cove would have looked like a few hundred thousand years ago.
Seeing that Durdle Door is just a mile away and I still have an hour left on my parking, I decided to leave my car and try to push it to and fro within an hour. The hike was not too bad and I manage to reach Durdle Door in 25mins. It was an amazing view. Durdle Door (sometimes spelled Durdle Dor) is a natural limestone arch on the Jurassic Coast. The arch has formed on a concordant coastline where bands of rock run parallel to the shoreline. To me, instead of a door, it looks more like a dinosaur. The beach here is shingles beach. Next to the Durdle Door is the Man O' War which is also equivalently beautiful. It's a shame that I didn’t have more time on my car park. I think it would definitely be very nice to be able to have a dip here at the cove of Man O' War. After snapping some photos, I returned back to the car park just in time. It's already close to 5.30pm so I decided to head back as the journey back will take approximately 50 mins.
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