A NEW project aims to increase people's awareness, knowledge and appreciation of the amazing landscape between Weymouth and Dorchester.

It is being launched on November 5 by the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty team which hopes the project will appeal to everyone who enjoys the countryside, including artists, photographers and amateur historians.

Among outstanding features of the area are the strange 'lumps and bumps' which litter the skyline between Broadmayne and Hardy's Monument - and which few realise are round barrows that have been there 4,000 years.

Some long barrows go back as far as 5,000 years, which experts say is an extraordinary survival feat considering their simple construction from native chalk with soil on top.

Round barrows come in a variety of modified forms - disc, bell and ditched - and there are some fine examples to see while walking the inland South West Coast Path route from Came Down, over Ridgeway Hill and on towards Gould's Hill and Hardy's Monument. The AONB said its project had been designed to encourage local people to get out on foot and explore the area and to get them more involved with it.

The team hopes to achieve this with a Lumps and Bumps photographic competition, entries for which will be displayed at the county library in April 2006. There will also be a watercolours and oils competition for budding artists to go out and paint scenes from life as they might imagine it to have been hundreds of years ago.

The project also has an oral history strand. It aims to help people learn how to carry out quality interviews with older members of the community, so that their stories of life in the Ridgeway villages of 50 or 60 years ago can be recorded for posterity.

The AONB added that there was even a chance that a few volunteers might be able to help English Heritage surveyors re-survey ancient earthworks.

A new booklet is being released at the project's launch, and there will be a free awareness morning at Portesham Village Hall with guest speakers including archaeologist Dr Bill Putnam and reconstruction artist Jane Brayne.

A second awareness day is scheduled for Dorset County Museum on November 26. For project details call 01305 756785 or see www.dorsetaonb.org.uk