I never made it down to Dorset as a child.
Having grown up in the Midlands, with Yorkshire parents, the place wasn’t even on our radar.
We always went North, to the windswept Lincolnshire coast, or to my parents’ Yorkshire childhood haunts.
But my first visit to Dorset was a nostalgic return for my partner.
He spent many holidays there as a child, roaming around Durdle Door campsite with his brother and getting up to mischief at Lulworth Cove.
My partner’s parents were in love with Dorset. So much so, that when they retired, they moved from Luton to Weymouth.
And so my partner, lad and I have visited Dorset often, over many years, taking in Wareham and Wool, Lyme Regis and Lulworth, Ringstead and Abbotsbury and Portland.
It is beautiful. Wild and picturesque by turns. Chesil Beach at sunset is one of my favourite destinations on earth.
But all good things must come to an end.
Having lost both of my own parents within three years of each other, I have seen my partner lose first his mum, and then his dad, cruelly, to different cancers.
So our more recent trips to Dorset have been tinged with great sadness.
A long time coming, this weekend marked the end of a long period of goodbyes.
We came to Dorset, this May Bank Holiday, with siblings and cousins, to scatter Grampa Alan’s ashes, as he had instructed, into the sea at Pulpit Rock, Portland Bill.
It was a perfect chill, sunny, spring day.
There were many tourists, but we somehow managed to find the privacy required to carry out our mission.
And now it is done we no longer have the same pull to continue visiting Dorset. Now, there are no more ties there.
We had a wonderful weekend, in a perfect thatched cottage, with a view over rolling hills to the distant sea. We talked, and walked in the sunshine, and ate chips at the beach, and drank wine, and reminisced.
Dorset has by no means lost its appeal. I’m sure we will go back. One day.
But it won’t be quite the same.
It is time to move on. To explore new destinations.
Now that we have said our goodbyes. ♥
