January 12th 2025 - Cogden to Abbotsbury Beach & Back

One week on and I’m back at Cogden again. This time I’m walking Eastwards to Abbotsbury via West Bexington. I was hoping for a better day with my weather app promising me a bright, sunny day, hmmm. 

I’d decided to follow the coast path route behind Burton Mere for the start of my walk, rather than the beach route, as I’d heard and read so many stories about how hard the walking could be on the shingle.  The Mere was looking more like a massive reed bed rather than a lake, I couldn’t see the water.

I soon realised that I’d made a mistake in going this way as I quickly encountered mud and flooded paths.

The trouble with this route is when the paths are so bad, you can’t cross over to the beach until you pass the Mere and I wasn’t for doubling back on myself, so I slogged it through the mud, eventually finding a slightly less flooded path behind the one I was on.  I imagine this part of the path is a lovely nature walk in the spring and summer, but there wasn’t a great deal to be seen at this time of year.  I have to say my main disappointment was the absence of any sea views, due to the height of Chesil beach above the path.

When I eventually got to the little bridge, I crossed over onto Chesil beach where the shingle was indeed hard walking.  I walked over the beach to the shoreline so I could see the sea. I’m so glad I did.  As the tide was outgoing, the beach was wet and was more sandy which made for much firmer walking, in fact walking along the waters edge was really easy and enjoyable. There was nobody around and the sight and sound of the waves was mesmerizing.

I’d spent about half an hour chatting (more like waffling) to my camera at this point, only to realise that my camera wasn’t actually filming, most annoying for me, but less boring footage for my YouTube viewers to watch (bit of an optimistic plural there) lol.

It’s a good job this part of the walk was so enjoyable because, although West Bexington was in sight the whole time, it never seemed to get any closer. It was like a mirage.

When I eventually did get close to West Bexington I climbed back over Chesil Beach to get to the car park which is right on the beach.

I mistakenly came to the top of the beach a few hundred yards too early and had to walk on the soft shingle for a little while, which was tough, slow going. I was so glad I’d found the easier walking by the waters edge. 

There are toilets at West Bexington but not much more, so I carried on to get to Abbotsbury.

I stayed at the top of the beach which was hard walking knowing that shortly there would be a track to walk on all the way to Abbotsbury. When I found the track (there had been no SWCP signage since Cogden) I was somewhat disappointed to find a muddy, deep rutted and partially flooded excuse for one. I had to leave it in places and walk on the beach, it was so bad. No car could ever get along it. I had to laugh as there was a signpost saying ‘Passing place for vehicles’, not that even a Landover would ever have got to it.

Eventually, as I got nearer to some properties the track improved and even became tarmacked as I got closer to Abbotsbury beach.

I lost sight of the sea again on approaching Abbotsbury as Chesil Beach got impressively high and the track was behind it.

Feeling a little peckish at this point I decided to eat my Walls vegan sausage roll.  My god are they well packaged or what!  It took me ages to get the wrapper off, I almost got to the point of deciding whether it was actually worth bothering with. A few choice expletives later I managed to get into it.  I probably used as many calories opening it as I got from consuming it.

On reaching the Abbotsbury beach car park I had to suffer the disappointment of the Kiosk/café being shut for a couple of months. Most inconsiderate, did they not know I was doing this walk today.  Luckily, I had my water with me, still gutted though, as I’d hoped to get a pasty and a coffee and sit at the top of the beach and admire the view.

I still climbed to the top of the beach and the views were fantastic. The Fleet could be seen clearly and Portland looked close at the end of the long gradual curve of the ever-impressive Chesil. Such a shame that my App had lied to me again and the day had stayed dull with just some brightness on the far horizon that never got any closer.

On looking westwards, I could see all the way back along the Chesil to Cogden which looked a bloody long way away and probably wouldn’t look much closer for best part of my way back.

I decided I would walk back along the track until it stopped being tarmac then switch to the waters edge all the way back to Cogden, a wise choice and very enjoyable.

I literally retraced my own footsteps along the waters edge as nobody else had been there. One point I noted on doing this was, I don’t seem to walk in a straight line, I meander from side to side quite a bit.

I was in no rush to get back to Cogden and really enjoyed the solitude and the sea all the way back, I felt totally refreshed and amazing.

Typically, just as I was coming off the beach to get back to my car, the sun began to appear over Portland and Abbotsbury and was slowly making its way along Chesil towards me.

On arriving back at my car, I felt I deserved a treat so I drove to Groves garden Centre near Bridport for an Earl Grey tea and a scone in their Ivy house café.  I must say, their fruit scones are amongst the best you’ll find anywhere.

Before setting out on this walk, I was expecting it to be hard work and boring, being a flat walk, but I was much mistaken. The Chesil never failed to impress and if you want solitude, walking by the waters edge is mesmerizing and not the hard work I was expecting.

According to the AllTrails app I walked a total distance of 10 miles with an elevation gain of 446ft and took 4 hrs and 24mins to complete. I have to admit that I’m a little puzzled by elevation gain on a flat walk. I guess much of that is crossing over chesil beach a number of times and the climb back up to where my car was parked at Cogden.