Tea with a view... Research walk around Ashley Chase House

Tea with a view! On the South Dorset Ridgeway...

As I type the rain is falling on the county of Dorset... This is much needed rain - the fields had started to look parched - but it makes me even more glad that I did my research walk yesterday. 

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, my third novel, The Right Place, will be mainly set around the small hamlet of Abbotsbury. 
Sir Ron Sinclair's estate, with his house, Genius Loci, at its centre, is located behind the coast road and Ridgeway, the very same place where I went yesterday for my walk. It is a beautiful and ancestral landscape with its very own elusive atmosphere... I went back to the secret chapel in the woods (Chapel Coppice) which always has an impact on me - a pagan past permeates the whole place, which was abandoned by its Christian founders many centuries ago. 
I only caught a glimpse of Ashley Chase, the house build in the 1920s. I had blogged about this specific location back in January 2016, when I was still living in the South East and was at the end of my second one-month residency at Norburton Hall. If you compare the pictures below with the ones from 2016 (Find the blog HERE), you will notice the massive difference the seasons can make! Also, the very thick fog we encountered on our walk back in 2016 has already inspired one of the scenes I have written for the novel! (And yes, four years ago, I was already working on my third novel and still haven't finished it, but many, many things have happened since then, including our move to Dorset!). 

Yesterday, it was sunny and dry, and we were able to enjoy the glorious landscape. Alas, my pictures do not do justice to the sheer beauty of the landscape and the variety of the flora. I find the mixture of so many types of trees - some of them looking more like fantastical beasts than actual trees - thrilling and rather artistic. 

An offering?

Remembering the dead...

This log covered in symbols that resemble witches' marks (or pagan symbols? Anyone knows?) wasn't there on our previous visit. 

A natural seat for the weary traveller.

One of the offerings left on the stone altar.

Catching a glimpse of Ashley Chase House...

Looking back to the path we have followed in the middle of the field...

The two photographs below were taken from the South Dorset Ridgeway, which runs parallel to this section of the coastal road. Once again, all I can say is that nothing beats actually being there: the view literally takes your breath away, and acts like a drug, making you slightly euphoric. 

St Catherine's chapel on its hill... Chesil Beach and the Fleet beyond...

Looking inland towards the Bride Valley...