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would take us across the military artillery ranges. Jack
Caldwell (the Group Chairman) undertook to sign a long
document indemnifying the Army in the event of any accident,
for we were warned by the same screed in very strong terms
not to wander off the paths because of the presence of
Dangerous Things like Unexploded Shells.
We took the by-roads through villages with names like
Church Knowle and Steeple, villages built of the warm local
Purbeck and Portland stone, and fitting into the rolling
landscape in the way that villages are supposed to fit. One
stretch of the narrow road ran along the scarp of the Purbeck
Hills like a miniature Hog's Back, and we stopped in a layby
to see the flat plain over six hundred feet below, with the
River Frome meandering in the distance on its way through
Wareham to Poole Harbour, seen vaguely through the. haze of
a sizzling morning.
Another narrow road wound down a valley to Tyneham, a
village that is dead, and only accessible on the few days
when the Army opens the roads. The former War Department
included Tyneham in its artillery range, and housed the
little community beyond Wareham; they promised to return
the area to its rightful owners, but there seems little hope
of the promise being fulfilled. The place is desolate;
windows stare blindly out of walls rising from a tangle of
creepers; once-tidy gardens are choked by weeds; barbed
wire and 'Danger' notices and an almost forbidding silence
induce a kind of claustrophobia, so that we were more than
willing to turn our backs on this ghost village on which
the sun, though in a cloudless sky, could cast no warmth.
We went on, then, to Lulworth Cove. This struck me as
a little gem in an idyllic setting, spoiled only by the
dusty car park, the souvenir shops and ice-cream parlours
and, above all by the hordes of people who came on this
scorching day, and covered the beach with acres of burning,