Exploring Dorset coastline - All about Chesil beach

This geographical wonder, part of Dorset's Heritage Coast, is thought to be unique in the world, a beach like no other, and as a result it has proved a subject of endless fascination for geologists.

The beach, created by Ice Age glacial movements around 80,000 years ago, is in essence a spit (or tombolo) joined to the land at both ends. It has an even curve and a regular crest line, this being at sea level in the west, rising to 40 feet high at Portland.

By the mid-1950s the compacted silt and clay bank atop Chesil Beach near Brandy Row in Chiswell, Portland, was being eroded at an alarming rate (Image: Supplied)

The pebbles, mainly flint and chert, are graded by size by an action of the sea called alutriation, with the largest at the Portland end and the size decreasing westwards down to shingle.

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Stories of yesteryear say that sailors coming ashore on Chesil could tell where they were by the size of the pebbles.

One of the best views in Dorset is looking westwards from high on Portland.

View of Chesil Beach from Portland (Image: NQ)

Here, on a clear day, one can see the magnificent curve of Chesil Beach and the adjoining Fleet stretching into the distance.

Behind Chesil Beach, stretching from Portland to Abbotsbury is the Fleet, a brackish lagoon and a site of special scientific interest home to Abbotsbury Swannery. Some sediments in the Fleet are thought to be up to 7,000 years old.

View of the Fleet (Image: Martin Shaw Photography)

For more than 600 years a colony of hundreds of mute swans has made its home on the Fleet at the Abbotsbury sanctuary. From the end of May visitors can wander safely around the nests and observe the fluffy cygnets at close quarters.

Chesil Beach is an excellent and well-known fishing beach with many competitions held throughout the year. Catches can include flounders, mackerel, whiting, gurnard, monkfish, bream, bass and cod.

It is not, generally, a safe place for swimming. The often steeply shelving beach and treacherous undertow currents have led to numerous drowning tragedies over the years.

St Catherine's Chapel above Abbotsbury (Image: Graham Hunt Photography)

High above Abbotsbury on a 260-foot hill is St Catherine's Chapel, a prominent landmark for seafarers. It was thought to have been built in around 1400 as a pilgrim chapel for Abbotsbury Abbey, which itself was destroyed during the dissolution and only the thatched barn survives.

The church of St Nicholas in Abbotsbury still bears the visible scars of musket fire caused during a Civil War clash in 1664 when the Roundheads were besieged by Cavaliers in the church tower.

Fleet lagoon - Gary Adams (Image: Gary Adams)

The small hamlet of Fleet was made famous by John Meade Faulkner's 1898 smuggling novel Moonfleet (and filmed by Fritz Lang in 1955 with American Stewart Granger in the lead role), using the name of the prominent village family the Mohuns. Tales of secret underground passages persist to this day.

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Although the village of Portesham is a little inland, the nearby 72-foot Portland Stone Hardy's Monument at Blackdown is visible for miles around.

Thomas Masterman Hardy (Image: Web)

It's nothing to do with famous Dorset author Thomas Hardy, but a tribute to Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy (1769-1839) Flag Captain of HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar and the man to whom Lord Nelson is said to have remarked 'Kiss me, Hardy'.

Burton Bradstock, a pretty, compact village at the western end of Chesil Beach, is notable as being the home of entertainer Billy Bragg and for the National Trust-administered Hive Beach, where the Hive Beach Café has become renowned as much for the quality of its fish dishes as its superb position.

Sir Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb (Image: PA)

The bouncing bombs famously used in the Dam Busters' Operation Chastise raids on the Eder and Mohne dams in May 1943 were first tested by designer Barnes Wallis on the Fleet at the Chesil Beach Bombing Ranges in late 1942.

A prototype bomb, pulled from the Fleet in 1992 can be seen at Abbotsbury Swannery.

The entire crew of 60 sailors and airmen on the unique aeroplane-launching submarine M2 were lost when the vessel sank during exercises off Chesil Beach in Lyme Bay in 1932. It is thought the hangar doors were opened too soon on surfacing. The wreck now has protected status.

Coastline at West Bexington (Image: NQ)

Much of the small coastal village of West Bexington, where there was a failed attempt to establish a holiday park in the 1930s, is owned by the National Trust.

This includes Limekiln Hill where a restored kiln is one of the best-preserved examples of the structures that once produced mortar and limewash from the early 19th century.