Charmouth, Lyme Regis and a hint of Axminster

The weather forecasters predicted that there would be a few days in September which they described as ‘an Indian summer’. Great, we thought, lets get out and about in The Beast aka our Bailey 79/4 motorhome.

So having packed everything in – booze, booze, more booze, some food (and a warm quilt just in case they were wrong) and filled up with diesel we thought, where shall we go?

Decisions, decisions?

During Covid it’s become much more difficult to find suitable sites where we can socially distance successfully and not have to share facilities, which was further south (as that’s where it was going to be warmest) and somewhere we hadn’t been to before?

We’d been watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage re-runs on the TV recently and as we hadn’t been there great lets go to Axminster. There aren’t any campsites near Axminster so 5 miles south on the coast we spotted Charmouth, investigating closer via Googlemap we saw there were a couple of static van/ touring sites there, we decided on Manor Farm Holiday Centre which was ideally situated right in the village and only a 5 minute walk to the beach. It mainly caters for long term static vans and caravans but did have fully serviced hardstanding pitches for tourers which was ideal for us. Their website didn’t really sell it but we thought it’s only for a couple of days and as their facilities were closed it won’t be too busy.

The site

We booked and paid on-line and when we arrived a friendly guy on a bike showed us to our pitch and then wished us a good stay with a wave. That was the only contact we had with anyone whilst we were there. There was a 16amp electric point, water tap and waste drain on the pitch, although the pitch width was good with plenty of gravel and a grassed area it wasn’t very deep so it was a bit tight getting the 30ft moho into position but we got there.

The toilet and shower blocks were closed as was the swimming pool and bar/restaurant but that didn’t bother us as it was only a few minutes walk up the road to a local pub (The George)

The George serves fairly decent grub and has a very large beer garden out the back. (It’s also pet friendly)

Just a few meters up the road is a pizzeria/fish and chip shop that did takeaways (the food here was very good). They also had a very clear one way system for queuing.

Charmouth

On our first day after a leisurely breakfast in the sun we walked to the beach front, had an ice cream and sat on one of the many benches, enjoyed the sunshine and people watched.

Directly on the sea front is a roomy car park (we counted 7 motorhomes and a couple of camper vans parked up) the Heritage Coast Centre, along with a couple of shops and a cafe (this was only serving takeaways during Covid)

Having enjoyed the rest we followed the coastal footpath up to the top of the village then walked back down following the main Axminster Road walking past some lovely homes with stunning sea views, a smattering of thatched cottages and quite a few holiday homes. It’s a very pretty village.

We wandered around the village and found the tiny Bakery (which was open) and the Fossil Shop (which was closed) a couple of trinket shops a small (but well stocked) supermaket, 2 pubs and the Chippy.

The following day we made our pilgrimage to Axminster to the famous River Cottage Cafe. The bus stop was almost across the road from the campsite, but the bus (which does a circular route through from Weymouth the Axminster) was already running nearly 40 mins late at 10am, this didn’t bode well for later on in the day only we didn’t clock it at the time!

Axminster

The bus took us through Lyme Regis and then onto Axminster, it was a bit of a nightmare getting a double decker through there but the driver managed it in the end, I made a mental note to use the by pass if we were to drive that way in the future! Axminster was a bit of a disappointment, the Church and the Carpet Museum were closed as were seemingly, most of the shops. By midday we found ourselves back at the main square and outside the River Cottage Cafe so we wandered in and asked if they had a table. We set ourselves down and by the time our order had been taken the place was full and the waitress was asking people to come back in 30 mins. A disaster had been averted purely by luck, after all we’d come all this way to eat here! So we celebrated with some bubbly. I had a elder flower sparkling wine and my OH sampled some River Cottage Cider (neither of which was actually made from River Cottage produce but was bottled by a company close by). Aah well, at least the food was authentic. I had vegetable soup with wobbly cottage sourdough bread and my OH had pork bangers and mash with onion gravy. Both were very tasty.

Lyme Regis

We timed it just right and caught the next bus back towards Charmouth straight after lunch and as it was still early afternoon decided to stop off at Lyme Regis. My OH confidently told me that the French Lieutenant’s Women‘s most famous scene (starring Merryl Streep and Jeremy Irons) was filmed on Lyme Regis’ famously curved Cob. I remember the film vaguely but watching the trailer 39 years after it was filmed made me laugh out loud. Oh dear, I’m sure Merryl looks back at this film as a bit of a turkey and may wish she hadn’t agreed to do it, her English accent is to die for!!! 😉

Anyway, we were charmed by Lyme Regis’ harbour, Cob and tacky shops and spent a very pleasant afternoon there aiming to catch the 5 o’clock bus back to Charmouth. Only the 17:05 bus didn’t arrive until 18:30! Due to Covid the bus could only take 31 passengers and there were 32 people waiting at the bus stop (one lady had been waiting for 2 hours). Although very apologetic the bus driver left the poor guy standing on his own at the bus stop even though half the bus was empty!

On our final day we decided to stay around Charmouth and chill. We walked down to the beach and visited the Heritage Coast Centre and walked some of the Coastal Path.

We had a lovely few days and felt very chilled and relaxed afterwards.

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