The Dorset Walk – Coombe Heath, Highwood and East Stoke
Matt Wilkinson and Paul Quagliana explore one of south Dorset’s less well-known corners
Published in June ’18
Think of walking in south Dorset and you think first, perhaps, of the coastal strip or the hills of Purbeck or the Weymouth hinterland. But there are other landscapes to be explored in this part of the county: less spectacular, perhaps, but rewarding in their own way.
Red marker flag on the edge of the army range. Keep going with the fence on your right
Coombe Heath is a classic example of acid heathland, both wet and dry, supporting a wide range of species. Wildflowers include bog asphodel and marsh orchids, the song of the woodlark and stonechat may be heard, among many others, while butterflies and dragonflies add interest in the summer. Highwood is a scattered hamlet of mainly large, prosperous-looking houses hiding away in extensive grounds. In front of one of them and looking rather charmingly incongruous is a corrugated iron former chapel bearing a sign, ‘The Mission’. ‘It was intended to be a place of worship for farm labourers of the immediate area who could not easily get to the parish church at East Stoke,’ explains Dorset’s expert on corrugated iron buildings, Michael Russell Wood.
Belted Galloway cattle in a field above the lake
You associate fens more with Cambridgeshire than with Dorset, but Dorset has one: East Stoke Fen. It is important for its tiny water-borne organisms which are at the bottom of the aquatic food chain.
East Stoke itself is remarkable for its size in having not one but two abandoned churches. 15th-century St Mary’s was demolished in 1828, partly because it was too small and partly because it is surrounded by water meadows, which made access difficult when the meadows were flooded. Today, an overgrown path gives access to some head-high ruins and a few gravestones: a sad and neglected place. The successor to St Mary’s was built to the north of the village, on the other side of the Frome, on the Wool-Wareham road, but it became redundant and was converted into dwellings in the 1990s.
The collection of houses known as Shaggs. It is not named after The Shaggs: the US three-piece, all-female pop combo (founded 50 years ago this year) that Frank Zappa cited as the third best band of all time, but whose album ‘Philosophy of the World’ was described in Rolling Stone magazine as perhaps ‘the worst album ever recorded’.
THE WALK
1 Walk down the road, away from Coombe Keynes and towards East Lulworth, passing Lulworth Equestrian Centre on the left and the wall of Lulworth Park on the right. In about ¾ mile, reach a row of terraced cottages on the right that goes by the unlovely name of Shaggs. These are followed by The Old Forge, shortly after which turn left along a track. Follow the track round to the right then, as it bends to the right again, continue straight ahead. Follow this to a gate between woodland on the right and an open field on the left, then continue on the track round to the right, slightly uphill.
2 In about 30 yards, turn sharply left through a gate onto another track. Follow this with rather a handsome lake in the valley bottom away to the left. As the track descends, it bears right into an open field. Ignore this, but go straight ahead through a gate onto a grassy path. Follow the path down to the bottom of the slope and round to the left, where it picks up the edge of the Lulworth army range. Go through a gate onto Coombe Heath and walk up parallel to the right-hand fence – the occasional red range flag is a useful waymarker.
3 Leave the nature reserve by a gate at its very far end and continue to follow the right-hand fence. Cross a footbridge and follow a winding path to the far right-hand corner of the patch of woodland. Here pick up the range fence on the right once again and follow it as it bends to the left and passes another useful red flag. At a corner where the track on the other side of the range fence bends to the right, as does the fence, continue straight ahead and emerge onto a lane.
4 Turn right and follow the lane through Highwood, across a cross-roads and into East Stoke. Just after the turning on the left to Manor Farm (not to be confused with the earlier Manor Farm Caravan Park), the road bends to the right. Just before the next bend to the left, go up some steps on the left and through a gate. Follow the path to a stile into a field, where keep to the left-hand edge. In the next field keep to the right-hand edge and cross a double stile tucked away in the first corner.
5 Walk across an open space with the ruins of St Mary’s in a patch of undergrowth on the right. Leave the open space (whose left-hand edge is marked not by a hedge but by a boggy stretch of ground) at its far left-hand corner. Continue in the same direction to a stile and bridge into an open field and turn right to follow the right-hand field-edge. East Stoke Fen is on the right. Pass into another, narrow field, on the far side of which cross a footbridge. Cross the next field diagonally to the far corner.
6 Turn left on a road and take the first turning on the right in about 300 yards, where the road itself bends sharply left. Follow this lane for a little over ½ a mile to Woodstreet Farm. The road then rises and as it bends to the right, turn left and walk down the right-hand edge of the field. Go through a gate and turn right on a track with woodland behind a wire fence on the left and an open field on the right. Follow the track round the woodland as it becomes an enclosed track, slightly uphill.
7 The track narrows to a path, which reaches the brow of the hill and enters woodland. Continue slightly downhill, just inside the right-hand edge of the wood, until the path emerges at the junction of three tracks. Here turn right and take the track uphill to a gate into an open field. Follow the grassy track that parallels the right-hand fence and when the fence bends away to the right, continue straight ahead to a gate. In the next field, the track curves gently to the left, down the hillside. Beyond a gate, it goes uphill, then round to the right to reach the corner of the road where your car is parked.
Distance: About 6¼ miles.
Terrain: Usually damp underfoot and occasionally very wet, especially on Coombe Heath, where the boggy areas can be hazardous, so stick to the paths. Undulating but with no steep climbs.
Start: Off the road by the sharp bend at Kimberts End. OS reference SY848842. Postcode BH20 5QR.
How to get there: Kimberts End is about 3/8 mile from Coombe Keynes and about 1½ miles from East Lulworth on the back road between the two.
Maps: OS Explorer OL15 (Purbeck & South Dorset), OS Landranger 194 (Dorchester & Weymouth).
Refreshments: None on the route.
