The Cerne Abbas Giant | Mysterious Britain & Ireland The Old Woman of the Tarn Today the hamlet of Talkin in north Cumbria sits astride the quiet road which connects the villages of Hallbankgate and Castle Carrock. Although secluded and well away from busy highways, it is now home to a variety of people from many walks of life. Read More » You are hereThe Cerne Abbas Giant The Cerne Abbas Giant The Cerne Abbas Giant or the 'Rude Man' is one of the largest hillfigures in Britain, he (the figure's gender is beyond doubt) is one of two representations of the human form, the other being the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex. The giant, carved in solid lines from the chalk bedrock measures in at 180 feet high, and carries a huge knobbled club, which measures 120 feet in length. Cerne Abbas Illustration: by Daniel ParkinsonThe first written record of the giant appears in 1751 in a letter by Dorset historian John Hutchins, he suggested that the figure was cut in the mid 1600's.

Another slightly later reference to the figure can be found in the Gentleman's magazine of 1764, where the figure is described and depicted with a navel, that has long since disappeared. The lack of earlier references is frustrating but does not mean that the figure dates to the 17th century, and its style and proximity to an Iron Age earthwork suggests a much earlier origin. There are numerous theories as to when and why the giant was created, one of the more popular is that he is the Greek-Roman god Hercules, who is often represented with a club and an animal fur. It has been suggested that the figure was once depicted carrying and animal fur in his left hand. It is possible that worship of Hercules arrived in the early part of the Roman invasion, which was then became amalgamated with a god of a local Celtic tribe. The theory given the most weight by historians is that it was created during the reign of the Emperor Commodus between 180 - 193 AD, he believed himself to be a reincarnation of Hercules and allowed the cult to revive.

Other stories suggest that the monks at the nearby monastery cut the giant as a joke on an Abbott called Thomas Corton, who was expelled from the area for malpractice. This is unlikely but its close proximity to a ecclesiastical house is strange, how could such an obviously pagan symbol have survived for so long? especially through puritanical times and the reformation. It may be that the religious buildings were built close to the giant as a form of amalgamation of the pagan site. This was common practice, and many churches are built on, or near to, sites that were once Pagan religious centres. Cerne Abbas GiantFolklore According to one tradition, recorded from a farm labourer in the Gentleman's Magazine, the figure is the representation of a Danish giant who had led an invasion of England from the coast. He had fallen asleep on the side of the hill, and the local villagers had taken advantage of his slumber and cut off his head. They had then drawn around his prone body in the manner of a gigantic police chalk line, to show where he met his doom. However, the chalk figure sometimes rose from the dead on dark nights, to quench his thirst in the local stream, a habit also common to certain standing stones.

The giant's obvious sexuality and virility was put to use in fertility folk magic. Local women who wanted to conceive would spend a night alone on the hillside - most productively within the confines of his giant phallus, and young couples would make love on the giant to ensure conception. Sleeping on the giant was also thought to be a good way to ensure a future wedding for unmarried women. Just above the giant's head is a small Iron Age earthwork which encloses a roughly square piece of land, this is known as the 'Frying Pan' or the 'Trendle' and it was within this enclosure that the Mayday Maypole was erected during the festival celebrations. Like many traditional village Maypole ceremonies this practice died out in the 19th century. Directions: The Cerne Abbas Giant | Dorset Ancestors The Cerne Abbas Giant by Dorset Ancestors . Some say he was carved out two milleniums ago, to represent the Roman god Hercules. Pagan rites were certainly carried out there some four centuries ago. But some affirm that he is a bogus god-figure, created out of the Dorset hillside in the 17th or 18th centuries.

He is the Cerne Abbas Giant, fashioned in the chalk above that village, a few miles from Dorchester. At 180 feet (55 metres) high, he is the largest hill figure in Britain. The Rude Man as he is sometimes referred to carries a 120-foot club and this place has been the setting for fertility ceremonials and practices. Visitors gazing from the viewing point look on in awe. Apart from the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, there is nothing quite like this in England. If such a figure were created today, it would cause an outcry. People climbing the giant’s steep hill are not much more than spots across the valley. On May Day, which must once have drawn crowds to this spot, the phallus points directly at the sun as it rises over the hill. The whole figure stretches two-thirds of the hill from top to bottom. Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire have many hill figures. This one is associated with maypole dancing in an earth enclosure, the “Frying Pan”, located high up above the giant’s left arm, which may once have supported a cloak in classic fashion.

At the end of the second century AD the Emperor Commodus, a supposed reincarnation of Hercules, who campaigned in Britain, revived the worship of this god. But the Dorset figure may be associated with the adoration of various Romano-Celtic gods. However, there is no actual reference to the giant to be found before 1694 when a payment in the Cerne Abbas churchwardens’ accounts of three shillings is recorded for the re-cutting of the figure. So we may be dealing with one of history’s hoaxes, performed perhaps by libertarians – on a colossal scale. In 1751 the Dorset historian John Hutchins suggested that the figure was chiselled out in the mid-1600’s. It was depicted in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1764. There is no reference in mediaeval documents. One theory is that monks at a monastery in the valley below created the giant as a joke. At any rate, local people have maintained the trenches, about half a metre wide and deep, down to the clay bedrock. The Silver Well or Augustine’s Well, flows below the giant and has both pagan and Christian connections.

Some even imagine the giant goes to the bottom of the hill for a drink from it at midnight. Actually, he would have to do little more than put down his club and stoop. In the 17th century Lord Denzil Holles (1598-1680) was lord of the manor and it has been suggested his servants cut the figure while he was away. The roof leads on the aisles of a nearby church were repaired in 1800 and 1843, and since then have had reliefs of the giant. What does Christian spirituality have to say about that? The whole subject is a curiosity. The inquirer keeps returning to the question of why there are no early records. Travellers in the Tudor and Stuart periods made no reference to the figure. Nor did the wealth of local mediaeval documents. Then there is the question of the monks. For at least 500 years a Christian monastery stood looking up at the barbarous and brutish, not to say impolite form. How could the abbot and monks, and visiting church personages, the pillars of society, have tolerated it? For five centuries?

This gigantic figure with his knurled club stands watch over the villagers of Cerne Abbas. He has in fact a kind personality, for he can help childless couples produce heirs, or so they say. Note: In the gallery there is an aerial view photograph of the Giant. dog friendly camping site and touring caravan park cerne abbas, near dorchester, dorset Book Now! Giants Head Caravan & Camping Park Giants Head Caravan & Camping Park is situated near the ancient Dorset village of Cerne Abbas, recently described ‘Britain’s most desirable village’ to live in, in the UK. High above the steep hillside is the site of an ancient fertility symbol carved into the hillside, the 180 foot high figure of the world famous ‘Rude Man’, the Cerne Abbas Giant. Now famously known in China as - The Big White Streaker! The Park, about three and a half acres is kept as natural as possible with mature trees and hedgerows, well drained and has a good hard road with 50 grassy pitches for touring caravans, tents and motorvans, with terraces and wonderful views over the surrounding Dorset countryside.

Right in the centre of Dorset in An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) giving great access to the very best of Dorset, including the Jurassic Coast along the East Devon and Dorset’s beautiful coastline, the Jurassic Coast is England's first natural World Heritage Site. On-site amenities include showers and hand basins plus washing up and laundry facilities, together with shaver points and hair dryer. Electric hook-up points, and battery charging is available on request plus the campsite is dog friendly with a separate area set aside for campers with dogs close to Wessex Ridgeway for some great walking. There is no shop on site but there are several great places to eat within a 5 mile radius including three pubs, a fantastic tea room and a well-stocked shop in the scenic village of Cerne Abbas just over a mile away, a further three pubs can be found along the Piddle Valley. Eight miles down the road is the County town of Dorchester, birthplace of Thomas Hardy, who spent most of his life in rural Dorset, which provided a background for his fiction including Far from the Madding Crowd, the new film released in 2015.

There are several South West Coast Path walks available from Giants Head and Treasure Trails (Dorset, New Forest and South Devon) is run directly from the site so visitors can pick up any of the 100+ Treasure Trails and head off in search of Dorset's hidden secrets. The Trails are a great fun thing to do for all ages and at anytime of the year, but especially for a day out with the kids at the weekend or over the school holidays (although - there are no children necessary - as there is a big kid in all of us!). Cerne Abbas Giant Hill Figure : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map: External Links: Image: Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by theCaptain Hill Figure in Dorset. The Cerne Abbas Giant is a hill-figure cut into the turf and underlying bedrock to expose a white chalk outline. He is almost 60 metres tall, and brandishes a club 36 metres long. His body is outlined and detailed by narrow trenches no more than 0.6 metres wide, and his condition has been maintained by periodic scouring by local people - an activity traditionally separated by long intervals. The antiquity of the Giant is still a topic of debate.

The various interpretations suggest that he might be a prehistoric fertility symbol (not surprising considering his disproportionately large phallus), a Romano-British depiction of Hercules or some other god of war, or even a huge 'cartoon' from the seventeenth century lampooning Oliver Cromwell. Access Assuming that you don't have the power of flight, the Giant is best viewed from the far side of the Cerne valley. He is clearly visible from the A352 road and there is a 'viewing area' with car parking spaces, picnic benches and interpretation board next to the turning to Cerne Abbas village. A waymarked "Giant Walk" takes the pedestrian visitor past his feet, but due to severe erosion of the turf the public is requested to remain outside the barbed-wire fence. Note: The Cerne Abbas Giant has grown his own Movember facial hair in support of Movember, which raises awareness of prostate and testicular cancer. You may be viewing yesterday's version of this page To see the most up to date information please register for a free account .

Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by TimPrevett First glimpse of the Cerne Abbas Giant while out on good 8 mile circuit of the Dorset countryside, 28/12/16. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by Bladup Cerne Abbas Giant. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by AngieLake Found this great vintage postcard just before Christmas, in Exeter. He doesn't seem to have changed much. Little dots around the figure might be people scouring the chalk, perhaps? Copyright of Aerofilms & Aero Pictorial Lts., Elstree Way, Boreham Wood, Herts. No stamp or message on rear to help trace date. Serial no. on front right = 4960A Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by croppy Cerne Abbas Giant Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion View across the Giant towards Cerne Abbas village in the valley below. If you want to see him 'properly' then the Viewing Area alongside the main road on the other side of the valley is a good place. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion The Cerne Giant, looking a little faded even though he's illuminated by some (rare) sunshine on this rainy summer's day.

Off to the left the giant Homer Simpson is painted onto the hillside. I didn't get a photo of them together as the patchy sunlight didn't allow it (and the Homer was much whiter than the Giant). Cerne Abbas Giant Homer Simpson submitted by JimChampion 26 July 2007. A close-up of the giant Homer Simpson painted on Giant Hill (to the left of the Giant himself). Part of a stunt to publicise the cinema release of the Simpsons film. The figure was made using water-based paint - the idea being that it would gradually fade away. This was our second visit to the Giant viewing area on this afternoon - on the first it was pelting down with rain and ... Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion Giant feet. The chalk hill figure is surrounded by a fence and "due to severe erosion of the turf the public is requested to remain outside the fence." Chalk figures need regular cleaning (scouring) if they are to remain vivid. This one is currently believed to have a relatively modern origin, possibly with the intent of mocking Oliver Cromwell. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion Giant Walk waymarker, with the obvious choice for the logo.

The walk takes you on a route up and around Giant Hill, although the best overall view (assuming you can't fly) is from the 'viewing area' alongside the main road. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion A slightly closer view of the Giant than usual, from the field below. The yellow grassy hexagon surrounding the Giant is an artefact from a now-removed fence (erected in 1887) that used to surround and protect the chalk figure. This coffin-shaped fence was removed in the late 1970s, replaced by a much larger rectangular enclosure which also includes "The Trendle" earthwork above the Giant's head. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by Thorgrim Too good to be true! The Cerne Abbas Giant was long thought to be a prehistoric hill figure showing a powerful fertility god. Other theories favoured a Roman depiction of Hercules wielding his club. Recent dating of the disturbed soil indicates that it is much more recent. It is now thought to be a caricature of Oliver Cromwell and mocks his self agrandisement as the great all powerful leader. ...

Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by JimChampion August 2004, taken from the car park by the A352 road. The giant is illuminated by afternoon sunshine between the clouds. Very vivid colours on this occasion. Cerne Abbas Giant submitted by andyb456 Best viewed from the car park on the main road. Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor. Prehistoric sites in Dorset, England - Dorset Travel Information England > Dorset > Gazetteer of Prehistoric Sites Prehistoric Sites in Dorset An Iron Age Hillfort to the northwest of Abbotsbury village. The fort encloses an area of 4 acres, and within the double ramparts, the outlines of huts can still be seen. The location is superb, with views across Lyme Bay. Abbotsbury, Dorset, England Badbury Rings Set on a high rise of land within the Kingston Lacy estates is the Iron Age hillfort known as Badbury Rings. The site, now crowned with trees, is defended on three sides by a trio of concentric earthen ditches and ramparts.

Badbury has been proposed as the site of Mons Badonicus (Mount Badon) - the great 6th century battle which saw a Romano-British force under King Arthur defeat invading Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Blandford Road, Wimborne, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: Cerne Abbas Giant A 180 foot high figure of a man bearing a club, carved into the chalk of the hillside. It is not clear who carved the giant, and speculation has ranged from the Romans, to Celts, to Iron Age Britons. The figure's rather impressive physical endowments have made him the source of fertility practices; local folklore says that an infertile woman who spends the night within the figure will then be able to bear a child. Cerne Abbas, Near Dorchester, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: Kingston Russell Stone Circle The Kingston Russell stone circle dates to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. The circle is composed of 18 stones, all fallen. The location is wonderful; the stone circle is set on a chalk hill top with wide-ranging views towards the sea and nearby Abbotsbury village.

Abbotsbury, Dorset, England, DT3 4JX Heritage Rating: A fascinating historic site consisting of a ruined medieval church standing within the remains of a Neolithic henge earthwork. The juxtaposition of the Norman church and the prehistoric henge monument represents a quite striking combination of Christian and pre-Christian history. Lumber Lane, Knowlton, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: Maiden Castle One of the most intriguing ancient sites in England, Maiden Castle is a huge pre-Roman fortress, with high earthen banks enclosing a hilltop site of 45 acres. The fort was occupied in the Bronze Age, but the 'castle' was extended to its current dimensions in the 1st century BC. In 43 AD the local Celtic tribes used Maiden Castle to make their futile last stand against the invading Roman Army. Dorchester, Dorset, England, DT2 9PP Heritage Rating: A long barrow that really is *long*! Pimperne barrow stretches to 330 feet in length, rises to 10 feet high, and is about 90 feet wide at its widest point.

The barrow can be roughly dated to 3500-4000 BC. Pimperne, Dorset, England St Augustine's Well, Cerne Abbas Near the ruins of Cerne Abbey is a holy well said to have bee founded by St Augustine in the early 6th century. St Edwold later set up a hermitage there. The well is said to heal eye problems and infertility. off Abbey Street, Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England Heritage Rating: The Nine Stones Nine Stones is a small stone circle set in a woodland glade immediately west of Winterbourne Abbas village. As the name suggests, the circle is composed of nine stones. It was constructed in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, around 2000 BCE. A35, Winterbourne Abbas, Dorset, England, DT2 9LX Heritage Rating: Winterbourne Poor Lot Barrows A large cluster of 44 Bronze Age burial mounds is spread out on either side of the A35 a mile west of Winterbourne Abbas. The site is so large that the grouping of barrows has been described as a Bronze Age cemetery.

What is fascinating about the site is that so many different types of barrows are clustered so close together. Here you will find disc barrows, bell barrows, bowl barrows, pond barrows, and the remains of what may be a hut circle. Winterbourne Abbas, Dorset, England, DT2 9XD Heritage Rating: 1 OF 16 CHARMING PROPERTIES RECENTLY DEVELOPED TO A HIGH STANDARD A STROLL FROM THE POPULAR WORLD HERITAGE JURASSIC COASTLINE. SHORT BREAKS ONLY AVAILABLE DURING OFF PEAK WEEKS. PLEASE CALL … Sleeps 6 Southover Farm House was refurbished in 2005 to a high standard and with the aim of making people view it as a holiday home, rather than a holiday let. … Sleeps 15 New Inn Situated in the peaceful village of West Knighton, New Inn - Dorchester is a former 16th-century coaching inn. It blends original features with modern attributes such as free Wi-Fi and free on-site parking.

The New Inn is ideal for both leisure and business guests offering a peaceful environment for … more >> More hotels in Dorset >> Manor Hotel This ideally located 16th Century Manor House is only 300 meters from Chesil Beach and the South West coastal path. Family run serving homemade food real Ales and great wines. Beer garden & terrace overlooking the Sea. Large free car park. The … more >> More hotels in Dorset >> The British Shore in Weymouth | Travel + Leisure The British Shore in Weymouth The British Shore in Weymouth By Rebecca Mead Weymouth, Dorset's seaside resort, has abundant charm and a history that encompasses D-day and the Spanish Armada. They even say the black death came from Weymouth. Rebecca Mead returns home to this quintessentially British shoreline There are, in the world, far more impressive beaches than the one at Weymouth, a seaside town in the county of Dorset in the south of England—beaches with whiter sand, clearer, warmer water, and much more reliably blue skies.

The sand at Weymouth is a dunnish yellow; the water, even on the warmest of days, can be charitably described as bracing; and the skies above the rolling hills and white chalk cliffs that embrace the curve of Weymouth Bay are so changeable as to suggest that watercolor painting itself was invented to capture their unpredictability. With regard to the weather, taking a vacation in Weymouth is a bit like playing the slot machines that can be found in the amusement arcades that line the seafront: you understand that the machines are rigged to ensure the arcade owner's ultimate profit, but you still hope you might strike it lucky along the way. I grew up in Weymouth and know all too well the limitations of the English seaside within the marketplace of contemporary vacation spots: in addition to the inclemency of the weather there is the unsuitability of narrow, 17th-century streets for modern vehicular traffic, and the very English absence, on the menu of a restaurant called the Lobster Pot, not only of lobsters but of almost anything that ever actually lived in the sea.

But although the town may not compare, as a beach destination, with one of those Caribbean resorts where workers rise at dawn each morning to rake the sand clear of seaweed before the guests emerge to enjoy the flawless, paradisiacal environs for which they have contracted, Weymouth nonetheless has its own charms—particularly for those who prefer finding traces of history written upon the place they are visiting, rather than expecting its complete erasure. Weymouth has candy-striped beachside huts selling buckets and spades and fish-and-chips, and retirees sitting in deck chairs on the promenade with blankets over their knees while younger, bolder visitors walk by shirtless and sunburned; but it also has an uninterrupted sweep of white-painted Georgian town houses along the seafront, with bowed windows optimistically facing the shimmering sea exactly as so many did more than 200 years ago. The town is part New Jersey shore, part Masterpiece Theatre. I've come to think of my childhood home as the Forrest Gump of towns: it's occasionally found itself at the center of historical events without ever having had any ambition to be there.

One early instance of Weymouth's accidental notoriety is that in 1348 it served as the point of entry in Britain for the black death, the plague that killed a third of Europe's population. "The black death started at the Black Dog," I was told by the man behind the counter at the town's car-rental shop when I visited not long ago; he was referring to the Black Dog public house, reputed to be Weymouth's oldest tavern. Persuasive alliteration aside, there's no evidence that the black death did begin at the Black Dog; the fact that the building dates only to the 16th century argues against it. But a visit to the bar, with its low-beamed ceiling and its pervasive scent of beer, is enough to conjure images of sailors and serving wenches merrily exchanging lesser infections throughout the centuries. In a more recent instance of Weymouth stumbling into the history books, its port served as the launching spot for more than 500,000 troops and nearly 150,000 vehicles during the D-day landings of 1944, and a few by now very elderly veterans still show up each year for the anniversary.

Weymouth's role in D-day, along with the part the town played in defending against the Spanish Armada and the Napoleonic fleets, is showcased at Nothe Fort, a harbor defense that was built between 1860 and 1872 and is now a naval museum with an enticing collection of old-fashioned military dioramas, cannons, and anti-aircraft weaponry from World War II. The volunteer staff at the Nothe Fort is so eager for their exhibits to be viewed with the proper attention that, when I arrived only 45 minutes before the museum's closing time, the gatekeepers were reluctant to let me in. "There are seventy-two rooms here," they informed me reprovingly. It reminded me of the time a shopkeeper in Weymouth told me that she'd stopped stocking a certain item because it kept selling out too quickly. Weymouth's proudest Forrest Gump moment, however, came in 1789, when it received the first of several visits from King George III.

The king was recovering from the initial episode of what would turn out to be a sporadic but debilitating madness, now thought to have been caused by Variegate Porphyria, a rare genetic disease that affects the skin and central nervous system. His doctors advised him that the seaside might be health-promoting. The town, by all accounts, went nuts over the royal arrival. The novelist Fanny Burney, who was a member of the royal household at the time, wrote a letter to her father from Weymouth in which she noted, "The loyalty of all this place is excessive; they have dressed out every street with labels of 'God save the King': all the shops have it over the doors; all the children wear it in their caps, all the labourers in their hats, and all the sailors in their voices, for they never approach the house without shouting it aloud, nor see the King, or his shadow, without beginning to huzza, and going on to three cheers." The main purpose of the king's visit was to engage in the newly fashionable health treatment of sea bathing, or dipping, as it was known.

Bathers were rolled into the sea in wheeled bathing machines that looked like a cross between an enclosed sedan chair and a small caravan, from which they would descend a flight of wooden steps into the cold water, where a phalanx of helpers called dippers would give hands-on assistance for a full immersion. The king's bathing machine was an octagonal hut with a peaked roof built atop a four-wheeled cart and decorated with the royal crest. The monarch's specially appointed dippers wore GOD SAVE THE KING on sashes swathed around their waists, and on the occasion of the king's first immersion, a band concealed in another bathing machine piped up with a stirring rendition of the national anthem at the moment of his head's submerging. When I was a child, the king's bathing machine was the prize exhibit at the Weymouth Museum; these days, museum and machine can be found at a place called Brewers Quay, an old brewery that, in my youth, perfumed the air over the harbor with beery yeast but has since been repurposed into an unpleasantly commercial shopping arcade with the pandering interactive Timewalk through Weymouth's history, a tour conducted by a cartoon character of a brewery cat.

Dipping didn't relieve the king of his madness, though it must have delivered a considerable shock to the royal system. The king made his visits to Weymouth in September, by which time the local climate is decidedly autumnal. To the modern-day visitor accustomed to the concept that the beach is somewhere you go to laze and tan, Weymouth beach, even at the height of summer, presents a perplexing comedy in which the 18th-century notion that the seaside is healthful but not necessarily comfortable apparently persists. Experienced beachgoers come equipped with windbreaks (waist-high canvas walls on wooden stakes that are nailed into the ground, behind which people sit, shielded from the winds), while some even pitch small tents on the sand for complete, zip-up shelter. Children frolic for hours at the water's edge, certainly; but many of them these days wear black wet suits that cover them from elbow to knee, and little rubber shoes, which can be bought on the seafront at gift stores, alongside the saucy postcards and souvenir candy. Although Weymouth couldn't cure the king, the king certainly transformed Weymouth.

Until the middle of the 18th century, there hadn't really been a beach at Weymouth—in those days, the strand of sand that is now the pride of the resort served as a garbage dump for the older town that is still huddled around the harbor. By the late 18th century, the sand had been cleared and bathing machines installed, and the king's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, had built himself a mansion on what was then the outskirts of the town. Gloucester Lodge, which in later years became a hotel and is now an apartment building with a bar and restaurant in its basement, signaled an epistemological shift in Weymouth: it was the first house to turn a welcoming face toward the curve of the bay, rather than turning its shoulder to the dangerous water, as the town's older buildings had done for centuries. (One Tudor building near the harbor displays scars of violence from the seas: in 1645, during the civil war, it suffered an assault from a ship's cannon, and a cannonball is still embedded in its gable.

That building, originally a merchant's house, has served for decades now as a very useful public toilet.) The king made Gloucester Lodge his Weymouth residence, where he would receive updates on affairs of state and goings-on across the channel, into which he was diligently being dipped. (It was presumably from Gloucester Lodge that King George wrote to Lord Grenville, his foreign secretary, in September 1792, about the latest news from France: "The idea of trying the Queen and adding her death to their many other crimes is most shocking, and must alienate the minds of all who have the least sentiments of humanity.") The citizens of Weymouth, rather than beheading their monarch, were finding out just how lucrative a monarch could be with his head still on: the king himself visited Weymouth for only 16 years, but his royal endorsement resulted in a boom that lasted a half-century or more. In 1800, the Esplanade was built, the stately seafront terrace whose architectural consistency is interrupted only by the gaudy Victorian addition of the Royal Hotel, completed in 1897.

Although Weymouth was always less raffish than Brighton, the resort favored by the prince regent, George III's son, it became an elegant resort for the rich, and the likes of Frank Churchill, the rapscallion charmer in Jane Austen's novel Emma, thought it fashionable enough to patronize. In 1810, the 50th anniversary of the king's coronation, the burghers of Weymouth erected a now gaudily painted statue of the king gazing out to sea, wearing an ermine cloak and flanked by a lion and a unicorn. He's still there, less a historical figure to locals than a signpost—the town bus stops at "the statue," which is never confused with another statue, the one of Queen Victoria at the Esplanade's other end—even though the horn on the unicorn was snapped off long ago. Weymouth's 18th-century grandeur has dwindled significantly, and these days the houses along the Esplanade are mostly moderately priced guesthouses, many of them lavishly decked with red, white, and blue flags, as if King George might show up at any moment, and decorated with elaborate floral displays.

Their interiors tend to show a disregard for authenticity consistent with Weymouth's current incarnation as a decidedly downmarket family destination. The breakfast room of the Brunswick Guest House, where I stayed and where the guests debate, each morning, the chance of sun or showers over fried eggs and sausages, is filled not with period antiques but with the owner's prized collection of framed posters of Hollywood movies and, over the mantelpiece, a selection of plates adorned with the image of Marilyn Monroe. Weymouth is a bit like that—the tacky and the elegant thrown haphazardly together by the accidents of history, the former showing no reverence for the latter. Weymouth's kitsch is not contrived: there's nothing knowingly ironic about its trampolines and helter-skelter slide and Punch and Judy stand, or about the sculptures of Neptune and galloping white-foam sea horses that a self-taught artist named Fred Darrington started modeling out of sand in a cordoned-off area of the beach in the 1920's, and are these days created by Darrington's grandson Mark Anderson.

There's no pretentious gentrification, which means that although there are now restaurants that aspire to decent cuisine, and even reach it (Perry's, a seafood restaurant on the harborside, actually sells seafood), the best meal I had on my most recent trip back to Weymouth was at a place on Market Street called Fish 'n' Fritz. It offers a choice of cod, haddock, plaice, or rock (huss) and is, in traditional Weymouth style, adorned with signed publicity photographs of washed-up celebrities from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, like the Mamas and the Papas, Rose Royce, and—a band whose success the United States was spared—the Nolans. When I was growing up in Weymouth, back when those celebrities were in their prime and I would have been thrilled to get their autographs, I had no idea that my town represented the lower-class end of Dorset, while all those inland miles of green hills and quaint villages were the county's high-class end.

In fact, I didn't realize it until years later, when I was living in New York and, at a cocktail party, met a man who'd grown up 30 miles from Weymouth, and who responded to my enthusiastic claim that we were from the "same place" by coolly pointing out that I was from Seaside Dorset, while he was from Country Dorset. He had a point: the two are quite different, even for those visitors not attuned to the complex hierarchies of the English class system. Country Dorset, with its picturesque villages of thatched stone cottages, set amid patchwork fields where cows or sheep graze by wooded ponds, tends in many places to look like a set for a commercial advertising something timeless and wholesome. The villages frequently have been used as sets for commercials advertising things timeless and wholesome, though not necessarily of Dorsetshire provenance: Gold Hill, a staggeringly pretty cobbled rise of cottages in the village of Shaftesbury, is well known to British television viewers of a certain age from commercials for Hovis, a bread company based two counties over, in Berkshire.

But an air of timelessness—there are no major highways in the county, and many villages are linked by single-lane roads—is hardly the most interesting thing about Country Dorset: it has its fair share of intriguing if somewhat accidental history, too. One of my favorite spots is Cerne Abbas, a village more or less preserved in amber in the 1840's, when it was bypassed by the Dorset railway system that brought advanced civilization to places like Weymouth. There are atmospheric, ivy-covered ruins of a 15th-century abbey, from which the town derives its name (legend has it that the first abbey on the site was built near a spring that spurted to life when a visiting Saint Augustine struck the ground with his staff), and a row of circa-1500 wood-framed, tile-roofed houses, whose gnarled struts and carved doorways were already almost a century old at the time of Shakespeare.

But the village's most spectacular asset is the Cerne Abbas Giant—a 180-foot-high figure of a naked man cut into a steep chalk hillside just outside the town, holding an enormous club in one hand and brandishing from his groin an equally oversize erection. No one knows much about the Giant's origins: he could be a 1,500-year-old legacy from the Roman occupation of Britain, representing Hercules, but there is, mysteriously enough, no mention of him in any historical documents until 1694, which has led to more recent speculation by historians that he is a caricature of Oliver Cromwell, surreptitiously carved into the hillside by sniggering royalists. The civil war is also obliquely memorialized in the towering aspect of Corfe Castle, a hilltop ruin in the southeastern corner of Dorset. The castle has an ancient foundation: it was originally built in 1087 by William the Conqueror, who sought to secure his claim upon England with a series of castles strategically placed along the southern coastline.

Over the years, Corfe Castle was augmented by succeeding monarchs, and in the 13th century King John maintained a royal house there as a base for hunting parties. In 1572 it became a private residence, and in 1635 it was sold to Sir John Bankes, whose loyalty to the king's side during the civil war was such that his family withstood two sieges by parliamentary forces and were only defeated by treachery from within their own garrison. The castle was reduced to ruins not by a pitched battle but by the government's decision, in the tumultuous year of 1646, that the structure should be brought down so as to prevent its becoming a royalist holdout once again. The political crisis permitted about as much concern for historic preservation as that displayed by the Marilyn-loving proprietor of the Brunswick Guest House: the castle was blasted with what must have been prodigious quantities of gunpowder, so that its turrets now appear to be sliding haphazardly down the hillside; its half-demolished inner bailey has been reduced to a jagged tower.

Locals made the best of the situation by carting off the blasted stone walls and building much of the lovely village that sits at the castle's ruined foot; and the Bankes family didn't do so badly, either. Between 1663 and 1665, they built Kingston Lacy, a house near the inland Dorset town of Wimborne Minster. The keys to Corfe Castle are preserved in the library, having been graciously bestowed upon Lady Bankes, with a very English propriety, by the parliamentary forces as they prepared to blow up her house. Much of Kingston Lacy's interior reflects the taste of a 19th-century Bankes descendant, a friend of Lord Byron who lived on the Continent to avoid prosecution for homosexuality and had all kinds of treasures shipped back to Dorset, including a gilded ceiling from a Venetian palazzo. The art collection is one of Dorset's surprises, and includes portraits by Titian, van Dyck, Velázquez, and Rubens, the last an uncanny rendering of the beautiful marchesa Maria Grimaldi accompanied by a glowering dwarf who pulls a curtain back to reveal the scene.

The odd old master aside, Dorset's greatest visual glory is its coastal path—part of a 630-mile-long trail that stretches from Minehead, in Somerset, almost to Poole, in Dorset. (In 2001, the place was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site; it's known as the Jurassic Coast.) The South West Coast Path is as impressive, in its way, as Route 1 in California, with the added attraction of its natural beauty not being marred by any actual highway. Backpackers in serious boots tramp alongside sprightly elderly locals with faces as craggy and weathered as the rocks around them: past Durdle Door, a spectacular natural archway carved into the limestone by the eroding waves; down to the neighboring Man-of-War Cove, a locale straight from the pages of a children's adventure book, cliff-edged and hemmed in by jagged outcrops of rock jutting from the water; and around the Isle of Portland, a craggy peninsula barely attached to the coastline by a high strand of stony beach.

You might think that here, in raw nature, there would be no traces of the comings and goings of British kings, or British conflicts, but that, of course, would be an error. The coastline around Durdle Door remains attractively undeveloped in part not because of its beauty but because it has been used for decades as an army firing range. (Dangerous parts are roped off.) Portland, reminiscent of Maine in its wild rockiness, is famous for its quarries, from which was cut the limestone that served to rebuild many of London's finest churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral, after the Great Fire of 1666. King George III makes an appearance on the coastal path, too. In 1808, an image of the king on horseback, measuring 280 feet by 323 feet, was carved into a chalk hillside in Osmington, just outside Weymouth. When I was growing up, I was told that the mad king, rather than being delighted at the tribute, was so offended that he'd been depicted riding out of town, rather than into it, that he never returned to Weymouth.

On my last trip home, I discovered that the hard fact that he had, in any case, stopped visiting the town after 1805 perhaps puts this historical datum into the "black death started at the Black Dog" category. But that's the thing about accidental history—the ring of truth has a pleasing enough sound to be going on with. WEYMOUTH AND DORSET WHEN TO GO June and July are usually quiet (English schools don't get out until mid-July), which makes August the month when holidaymakers descend. Don't miss the mid-August carnival, complete with a parade and rides set up on the Esplanade along the beach—it's madly crowded but wildly amusing. Another good time to visit is during a warm weekend in May, but this can be hard to arrange as the weather is so unreliable. The warmest summer temperatures hit a high of only about 68 degrees— jackets and Windbreakers are recommended. GETTING THERE It is possible to drive to Weymouth from Heathrow (121 miles) or Gatwick (145 miles), but this is not advisable in the summer months, when traffic can be heavy.

There are also numerous flights from Europe into Bournemouth and Southampton airports, and easy links from France and Belgium into Poole and Weymouth. Trains that stop at the coastal towns leave hourly from London via Dorchester South and from Bath. Trains between Weymouth and Dorchester depart every half-hour and those between Weymouth and Bristol leave every two hours. Buses are another viable option: one four-hour National Express bus arrives daily from London, and many more come from Bristol, Southampton, and Bournemouth. For further information, contact Traveline (44-870/608-2608; ). WHERE TO STAY Brunswick Guest House Brunswick offers local color inside (a British clientele and homey comfort) and out (it faces directly onto the beach—and its uproarious weekend scene). 9 Brunswick Terrace; 44-1305/785-408; ; doubles from $55, including breakfast. Hotel Rembrandt This hotel is definitely the fanciest place in town. 1218 Dorchester Rd.; 44-1305/764-000; ; doubles from $185, including breakfast.

Royal Hotel Visitors must book at this Victorian property for a minimum of three nights. The rooms with unobstructed views of the Esplanade are a hot commodity (and cost extra). 9091 Esplanade; 44-1305/782-777; ; three-night package from $240 per person. WHERE TO EAT The British Shore in Weymouth | Travel + Leisure The British Shore in Weymouth The British Shore in Weymouth By Rebecca Mead Weymouth, Dorset's seaside resort, has abundant charm and a history that encompasses D-day and the Spanish Armada. They even say the black death came from Weymouth. Rebecca Mead returns home to this quintessentially British shoreline There are, in the world, far more impressive beaches than the one at Weymouth, a seaside town in the county of Dorset in the south of England—beaches with whiter sand, clearer, warmer water, and much more reliably blue skies.

The sand at Weymouth is a dunnish yellow; the water, even on the warmest of days, can be charitably described as bracing; and the skies above the rolling hills and white chalk cliffs that embrace the curve of Weymouth Bay are so changeable as to suggest that watercolor painting itself was invented to capture their unpredictability. With regard to the weather, taking a vacation in Weymouth is a bit like playing the slot machines that can be found in the amusement arcades that line the seafront: you understand that the machines are rigged to ensure the arcade owner's ultimate profit, but you still hope you might strike it lucky along the way. I grew up in Weymouth and know all too well the limitations of the English seaside within the marketplace of contemporary vacation spots: in addition to the inclemency of the weather there is the unsuitability of narrow, 17th-century streets for modern vehicular traffic, and the very English absence, on the menu of a restaurant called the Lobster Pot, not only of lobsters but of almost anything that ever actually lived in the sea.

But although the town may not compare, as a beach destination, with one of those Caribbean resorts where workers rise at dawn each morning to rake the sand clear of seaweed before the guests emerge to enjoy the flawless, paradisiacal environs for which they have contracted, Weymouth nonetheless has its own charms—particularly for those who prefer finding traces of history written upon the place they are visiting, rather than expecting its complete erasure. Weymouth has candy-striped beachside huts selling buckets and spades and fish-and-chips, and retirees sitting in deck chairs on the promenade with blankets over their knees while younger, bolder visitors walk by shirtless and sunburned; but it also has an uninterrupted sweep of white-painted Georgian town houses along the seafront, with bowed windows optimistically facing the shimmering sea exactly as so many did more than 200 years ago. The town is part New Jersey shore, part Masterpiece Theatre. I've come to think of my childhood home as the Forrest Gump of towns: it's occasionally found itself at the center of historical events without ever having had any ambition to be there.

One early instance of Weymouth's accidental notoriety is that in 1348 it served as the point of entry in Britain for the black death, the plague that killed a third of Europe's population. "The black death started at the Black Dog," I was told by the man behind the counter at the town's car-rental shop when I visited not long ago; he was referring to the Black Dog public house, reputed to be Weymouth's oldest tavern. Persuasive alliteration aside, there's no evidence that the black death did begin at the Black Dog; the fact that the building dates only to the 16th century argues against it. But a visit to the bar, with its low-beamed ceiling and its pervasive scent of beer, is enough to conjure images of sailors and serving wenches merrily exchanging lesser infections throughout the centuries. In a more recent instance of Weymouth stumbling into the history books, its port served as the launching spot for more than 500,000 troops and nearly 150,000 vehicles during the D-day landings of 1944, and a few by now very elderly veterans still show up each year for the anniversary.

Weymouth's role in D-day, along with the part the town played in defending against the Spanish Armada and the Napoleonic fleets, is showcased at Nothe Fort, a harbor defense that was built between 1860 and 1872 and is now a naval museum with an enticing collection of old-fashioned military dioramas, cannons, and anti-aircraft weaponry from World War II. The volunteer staff at the Nothe Fort is so eager for their exhibits to be viewed with the proper attention that, when I arrived only 45 minutes before the museum's closing time, the gatekeepers were reluctant to let me in. "There are seventy-two rooms here," they informed me reprovingly. It reminded me of the time a shopkeeper in Weymouth told me that she'd stopped stocking a certain item because it kept selling out too quickly. Weymouth's proudest Forrest Gump moment, however, came in 1789, when it received the first of several visits from King George III.

The king was recovering from the initial episode of what would turn out to be a sporadic but debilitating madness, now thought to have been caused by Variegate Porphyria, a rare genetic disease that affects the skin and central nervous system. His doctors advised him that the seaside might be health-promoting. The town, by all accounts, went nuts over the royal arrival. The novelist Fanny Burney, who was a member of the royal household at the time, wrote a letter to her father from Weymouth in which she noted, "The loyalty of all this place is excessive; they have dressed out every street with labels of 'God save the King': all the shops have it over the doors; all the children wear it in their caps, all the labourers in their hats, and all the sailors in their voices, for they never approach the house without shouting it aloud, nor see the King, or his shadow, without beginning to huzza, and going on to three cheers." The main purpose of the king's visit was to engage in the newly fashionable health treatment of sea bathing, or dipping, as it was known.

Bathers were rolled into the sea in wheeled bathing machines that looked like a cross between an enclosed sedan chair and a small caravan, from which they would descend a flight of wooden steps into the cold water, where a phalanx of helpers called dippers would give hands-on assistance for a full immersion. The king's bathing machine was an octagonal hut with a peaked roof built atop a four-wheeled cart and decorated with the royal crest. The monarch's specially appointed dippers wore GOD SAVE THE KING on sashes swathed around their waists, and on the occasion of the king's first immersion, a band concealed in another bathing machine piped up with a stirring rendition of the national anthem at the moment of his head's submerging. When I was a child, the king's bathing machine was the prize exhibit at the Weymouth Museum; these days, museum and machine can be found at a place called Brewers Quay, an old brewery that, in my youth, perfumed the air over the harbor with beery yeast but has since been repurposed into an unpleasantly commercial shopping arcade with the pandering interactive Timewalk through Weymouth's history, a tour conducted by a cartoon character of a brewery cat.

Dipping didn't relieve the king of his madness, though it must have delivered a considerable shock to the royal system. The king made his visits to Weymouth in September, by which time the local climate is decidedly autumnal. To the modern-day visitor accustomed to the concept that the beach is somewhere you go to laze and tan, Weymouth beach, even at the height of summer, presents a perplexing comedy in which the 18th-century notion that the seaside is healthful but not necessarily comfortable apparently persists. Experienced beachgoers come equipped with windbreaks (waist-high canvas walls on wooden stakes that are nailed into the ground, behind which people sit, shielded from the winds), while some even pitch small tents on the sand for complete, zip-up shelter. Children frolic for hours at the water's edge, certainly; but many of them these days wear black wet suits that cover them from elbow to knee, and little rubber shoes, which can be bought on the seafront at gift stores, alongside the saucy postcards and souvenir candy. Although Weymouth couldn't cure the king, the king certainly transformed Weymouth.

Until the middle of the 18th century, there hadn't really been a beach at Weymouth—in those days, the strand of sand that is now the pride of the resort served as a garbage dump for the older town that is still huddled around the harbor. By the late 18th century, the sand had been cleared and bathing machines installed, and the king's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, had built himself a mansion on what was then the outskirts of the town. Gloucester Lodge, which in later years became a hotel and is now an apartment building with a bar and restaurant in its basement, signaled an epistemological shift in Weymouth: it was the first house to turn a welcoming face toward the curve of the bay, rather than turning its shoulder to the dangerous water, as the town's older buildings had done for centuries. (One Tudor building near the harbor displays scars of violence from the seas: in 1645, during the civil war, it suffered an assault from a ship's cannon, and a cannonball is still embedded in its gable.

That building, originally a merchant's house, has served for decades now as a very useful public toilet.) The king made Gloucester Lodge his Weymouth residence, where he would receive updates on affairs of state and goings-on across the channel, into which he was diligently being dipped. (It was presumably from Gloucester Lodge that King George wrote to Lord Grenville, his foreign secretary, in September 1792, about the latest news from France: "The idea of trying the Queen and adding her death to their many other crimes is most shocking, and must alienate the minds of all who have the least sentiments of humanity.") The citizens of Weymouth, rather than beheading their monarch, were finding out just how lucrative a monarch could be with his head still on: the king himself visited Weymouth for only 16 years, but his royal endorsement resulted in a boom that lasted a half-century or more. In 1800, the Esplanade was built, the stately seafront terrace whose architectural consistency is interrupted only by the gaudy Victorian addition of the Royal Hotel, completed in 1897.

Although Weymouth was always less raffish than Brighton, the resort favored by the prince regent, George III's son, it became an elegant resort for the rich, and the likes of Frank Churchill, the rapscallion charmer in Jane Austen's novel Emma, thought it fashionable enough to patronize. In 1810, the 50th anniversary of the king's coronation, the burghers of Weymouth erected a now gaudily painted statue of the king gazing out to sea, wearing an ermine cloak and flanked by a lion and a unicorn. He's still there, less a historical figure to locals than a signpost—the town bus stops at "the statue," which is never confused with another statue, the one of Queen Victoria at the Esplanade's other end—even though the horn on the unicorn was snapped off long ago. Weymouth's 18th-century grandeur has dwindled significantly, and these days the houses along the Esplanade are mostly moderately priced guesthouses, many of them lavishly decked with red, white, and blue flags, as if King George might show up at any moment, and decorated with elaborate floral displays.

Their interiors tend to show a disregard for authenticity consistent with Weymouth's current incarnation as a decidedly downmarket family destination. The breakfast room of the Brunswick Guest House, where I stayed and where the guests debate, each morning, the chance of sun or showers over fried eggs and sausages, is filled not with period antiques but with the owner's prized collection of framed posters of Hollywood movies and, over the mantelpiece, a selection of plates adorned with the image of Marilyn Monroe. Weymouth is a bit like that—the tacky and the elegant thrown haphazardly together by the accidents of history, the former showing no reverence for the latter. Weymouth's kitsch is not contrived: there's nothing knowingly ironic about its trampolines and helter-skelter slide and Punch and Judy stand, or about the sculptures of Neptune and galloping white-foam sea horses that a self-taught artist named Fred Darrington started modeling out of sand in a cordoned-off area of the beach in the 1920's, and are these days created by Darrington's grandson Mark Anderson.

There's no pretentious gentrification, which means that although there are now restaurants that aspire to decent cuisine, and even reach it (Perry's, a seafood restaurant on the harborside, actually sells seafood), the best meal I had on my most recent trip back to Weymouth was at a place on Market Street called Fish 'n' Fritz. It offers a choice of cod, haddock, plaice, or rock (huss) and is, in traditional Weymouth style, adorned with signed publicity photographs of washed-up celebrities from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, like the Mamas and the Papas, Rose Royce, and—a band whose success the United States was spared—the Nolans. When I was growing up in Weymouth, back when those celebrities were in their prime and I would have been thrilled to get their autographs, I had no idea that my town represented the lower-class end of Dorset, while all those inland miles of green hills and quaint villages were the county's high-class end.

In fact, I didn't realize it until years later, when I was living in New York and, at a cocktail party, met a man who'd grown up 30 miles from Weymouth, and who responded to my enthusiastic claim that we were from the "same place" by coolly pointing out that I was from Seaside Dorset, while he was from Country Dorset. He had a point: the two are quite different, even for those visitors not attuned to the complex hierarchies of the English class system. Country Dorset, with its picturesque villages of thatched stone cottages, set amid patchwork fields where cows or sheep graze by wooded ponds, tends in many places to look like a set for a commercial advertising something timeless and wholesome. The villages frequently have been used as sets for commercials advertising things timeless and wholesome, though not necessarily of Dorsetshire provenance: Gold Hill, a staggeringly pretty cobbled rise of cottages in the village of Shaftesbury, is well known to British television viewers of a certain age from commercials for Hovis, a bread company based two counties over, in Berkshire.

But an air of timelessness—there are no major highways in the county, and many villages are linked by single-lane roads—is hardly the most interesting thing about Country Dorset: it has its fair share of intriguing if somewhat accidental history, too. One of my favorite spots is Cerne Abbas, a village more or less preserved in amber in the 1840's, when it was bypassed by the Dorset railway system that brought advanced civilization to places like Weymouth. There are atmospheric, ivy-covered ruins of a 15th-century abbey, from which the town derives its name (legend has it that the first abbey on the site was built near a spring that spurted to life when a visiting Saint Augustine struck the ground with his staff), and a row of circa-1500 wood-framed, tile-roofed houses, whose gnarled struts and carved doorways were already almost a century old at the time of Shakespeare.

But the village's most spectacular asset is the Cerne Abbas Giant—a 180-foot-high figure of a naked man cut into a steep chalk hillside just outside the town, holding an enormous club in one hand and brandishing from his groin an equally oversize erection. No one knows much about the Giant's origins: he could be a 1,500-year-old legacy from the Roman occupation of Britain, representing Hercules, but there is, mysteriously enough, no mention of him in any historical documents until 1694, which has led to more recent speculation by historians that he is a caricature of Oliver Cromwell, surreptitiously carved into the hillside by sniggering royalists. The civil war is also obliquely memorialized in the towering aspect of Corfe Castle, a hilltop ruin in the southeastern corner of Dorset. The castle has an ancient foundation: it was originally built in 1087 by William the Conqueror, who sought to secure his claim upon England with a series of castles strategically placed along the southern coastline.

Over the years, Corfe Castle was augmented by succeeding monarchs, and in the 13th century King John maintained a royal house there as a base for hunting parties. In 1572 it became a private residence, and in 1635 it was sold to Sir John Bankes, whose loyalty to the king's side during the civil war was such that his family withstood two sieges by parliamentary forces and were only defeated by treachery from within their own garrison. The castle was reduced to ruins not by a pitched battle but by the government's decision, in the tumultuous year of 1646, that the structure should be brought down so as to prevent its becoming a royalist holdout once again. The political crisis permitted about as much concern for historic preservation as that displayed by the Marilyn-loving proprietor of the Brunswick Guest House: the castle was blasted with what must have been prodigious quantities of gunpowder, so that its turrets now appear to be sliding haphazardly down the hillside; its half-demolished inner bailey has been reduced to a jagged tower.

Locals made the best of the situation by carting off the blasted stone walls and building much of the lovely village that sits at the castle's ruined foot; and the Bankes family didn't do so badly, either. Between 1663 and 1665, they built Kingston Lacy, a house near the inland Dorset town of Wimborne Minster. The keys to Corfe Castle are preserved in the library, having been graciously bestowed upon Lady Bankes, with a very English propriety, by the parliamentary forces as they prepared to blow up her house. Much of Kingston Lacy's interior reflects the taste of a 19th-century Bankes descendant, a friend of Lord Byron who lived on the Continent to avoid prosecution for homosexuality and had all kinds of treasures shipped back to Dorset, including a gilded ceiling from a Venetian palazzo. The art collection is one of Dorset's surprises, and includes portraits by Titian, van Dyck, Velázquez, and Rubens, the last an uncanny rendering of the beautiful marchesa Maria Grimaldi accompanied by a glowering dwarf who pulls a curtain back to reveal the scene.

The odd old master aside, Dorset's greatest visual glory is its coastal path—part of a 630-mile-long trail that stretches from Minehead, in Somerset, almost to Poole, in Dorset. (In 2001, the place was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site; it's known as the Jurassic Coast.) The South West Coast Path is as impressive, in its way, as Route 1 in California, with the added attraction of its natural beauty not being marred by any actual highway. Backpackers in serious boots tramp alongside sprightly elderly locals with faces as craggy and weathered as the rocks around them: past Durdle Door, a spectacular natural archway carved into the limestone by the eroding waves; down to the neighboring Man-of-War Cove, a locale straight from the pages of a children's adventure book, cliff-edged and hemmed in by jagged outcrops of rock jutting from the water; and around the Isle of Portland, a craggy peninsula barely attached to the coastline by a high strand of stony beach.

You might think that here, in raw nature, there would be no traces of the comings and goings of British kings, or British conflicts, but that, of course, would be an error. The coastline around Durdle Door remains attractively undeveloped in part not because of its beauty but because it has been used for decades as an army firing range. (Dangerous parts are roped off.) Portland, reminiscent of Maine in its wild rockiness, is famous for its quarries, from which was cut the limestone that served to rebuild many of London's finest churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral, after the Great Fire of 1666. King George III makes an appearance on the coastal path, too. In 1808, an image of the king on horseback, measuring 280 feet by 323 feet, was carved into a chalk hillside in Osmington, just outside Weymouth. When I was growing up, I was told that the mad king, rather than being delighted at the tribute, was so offended that he'd been depicted riding out of town, rather than into it, that he never returned to Weymouth.

On my last trip home, I discovered that the hard fact that he had, in any case, stopped visiting the town after 1805 perhaps puts this historical datum into the "black death started at the Black Dog" category. But that's the thing about accidental history—the ring of truth has a pleasing enough sound to be going on with. WEYMOUTH AND DORSET WHEN TO GO June and July are usually quiet (English schools don't get out until mid-July), which makes August the month when holidaymakers descend. Don't miss the mid-August carnival, complete with a parade and rides set up on the Esplanade along the beach—it's madly crowded but wildly amusing. Another good time to visit is during a warm weekend in May, but this can be hard to arrange as the weather is so unreliable. The warmest summer temperatures hit a high of only about 68 degrees— jackets and Windbreakers are recommended. GETTING THERE It is possible to drive to Weymouth from Heathrow (121 miles) or Gatwick (145 miles), but this is not advisable in the summer months, when traffic can be heavy.

There are also numerous flights from Europe into Bournemouth and Southampton airports, and easy links from France and Belgium into Poole and Weymouth. Trains that stop at the coastal towns leave hourly from London via Dorchester South and from Bath. Trains between Weymouth and Dorchester depart every half-hour and those between Weymouth and Bristol leave every two hours. Buses are another viable option: one four-hour National Express bus arrives daily from London, and many more come from Bristol, Southampton, and Bournemouth. For further information, contact Traveline (44-870/608-2608; ). WHERE TO STAY Brunswick Guest House Brunswick offers local color inside (a British clientele and homey comfort) and out (it faces directly onto the beach—and its uproarious weekend scene). 9 Brunswick Terrace; 44-1305/785-408; ; doubles from $55, including breakfast. Hotel Rembrandt This hotel is definitely the fanciest place in town. 1218 Dorchester Rd.; 44-1305/764-000; ; doubles from $185, including breakfast.

Royal Hotel Visitors must book at this Victorian property for a minimum of three nights. The rooms with unobstructed views of the Esplanade are a hot commodity (and cost extra). 9091 Esplanade; 44-1305/782-777; ; three-night package from $240 per person. WHERE TO EAT

Question: The 'Cerne Abbas Giant' is a 180 foot high carved hill figure located in which county?
Answer: DORSET