Lyme Regis

Full of our full English breakfast we drove along the Jurassic Coast from Weymouth to Lyme Regis where we spent a lovely day. Both places are on the same coastline and are holiday spots for families but are remarkably different.

Weymouth a reasonably sized town, is completely flat, has a vast beach, ferris wheels, tat shops, many many bars, a huge marina but the town centre is quite rundown and it kinda feels neglected.

Lyme Regis is tiny and cute, mostly built on a hill, with a small sandy bay which extends into a larger stony beach, it’s buildings are well kept and painted to make the place more attractive, the shops are artisan and the bars are micro.

Generally the two places are chalk and cheese but both offer a lovely place to bring children to swim in calm shallow waters. There are two park and rides in Lyme Regis, we drove past the first one and down into the town which has many “traffic calming” measures in place including single lane sections and traffic lights for single lane when the road is too narrow for passing cars.

Once through the town we got to the second park and ride and walked from there downhill to the cute beach area. There is a small promenade with a few ice cream shops and cafe’s behind the beach which takes you along to the wee town. We also saw lots of artisan bakeries with donuts and other yummy baked daily goods but were too full from breakfast to have lunch.

The Jurassic theme is big here with museums and galleries dedicated to the locally discovered fossils of dinosaurs. But most of the cute shops belong to artists with galleries and even a potter. I fell in love with one woman’s work and bought a few cards plus something for my wall. After this we found a microbrewery down a wee lane where we sat on the wall of the old Mill which sits beside the river and enjoyed a half pint of their gluten free beer and their IPA. The publican brought his cockatoo out for a toilet break and everyone was just so relaxed, a lovely spot to spend a while.

Once we’d finished walking around the wee town we headed back up to the park and ride – the ride was a double decker bus which passed us as we trudged up the hill. It was a Wellington like street, which wasn’t great with a belly full of ice cream and beer but we made it, took one last look at the view then headed back to MK.

On our way back to Milton Keynes Google decided to redirect traffic in both directions off the A303 (which is dual carriageway and fast moving) onto the narrowest country roads for about 30 minutes. With cars trying to pass each other in both directions and passing through tiny historic villages it was pure chaos until Google returned us all to the A303 – we are sure something had happened but amused by how we (and thousands of others) blindly follow Google’s instructions while driving.

We had one more outlet mall to visit which was open until 9pm, this one is called Bicester Village and it’s 100% designer shops with queues of people patiently waiting to get into Dior, Gucci, Jimmy Choo etc etc. We were impressed at the outdoor mall structure, the sheer number of people here on a Friday evening and the queues for brands we’d never heard of with expensive price tags we couldn’t comprehend.

Leaving having bought nothing we headed back to MK to a lovely pub next to the canal with a large garden where we enjoyed picky bits for our dinner. A lovely evening.

More pics of Lyme Regis below.