This week : Dorset life begins!
Our days in Salisbury are numbered; we can smell the salt in the air…
For the past four months, my wife and The Boy have commuted southwards to workplace and school respectively, anticipating a time when all of us are entrenched in Dorset. The keys to Kings Road, Salisbury, have been handed over, and my final visit finds me recovering the disparate contents of the final cycle of the dishwasher (Post Eighteen – Elephants and Coat-hangers). The objects are, rather unceremoniously, left outside the front door in a plastic bag of No.22 for me to retrieve. Also contained therein is chocolate contraband that we’d surreptitiously hidden from The Boy over Christmas; hidden with such cunning skill that we’d forgotten all about it.
Now that I have joined my dearly beloved in our temporary cottage retreat in Worth Matravers, our new life by the sea finally begins. The essentials are in: laptops, a chunky “beans-to-cup” Barista Express coffee machine and 25- litre plastic boxes of herb and spice jars, vinegars, and sauces; each of which we have used once in a blue moon. The geography of the Isle of Purbeck is familiar to us, but we explore with new eyes. This time we know that it defines our future, albeit nine or ten miles further west down the coast to Lulworth, once Will the Builder’s work is done. It is a considerably smaller living space than we are used to, thus preparing us for The Shack. Unlike the quaint, unspoiled charms of the cottage, though, The Shack will be re-purposed for the would-be eco-enthusiastic coast-huggers that we aspire to be.
Our first Saturday together in Dorset coincides with my fifty-sixth birthday. In the morning, The Boy has his first riding lesson at the RAC Saddle Club in Bovington. It is a triumph. Where there were eight or none to a class at his previous riding school, here there are just three. He gets to tack his horse up, lead it to the arena, and the lessons seem much more focused and grown-up than any he’s had before. Best of all, there is a little coffee hut that serves breakfast: I get to watch The Boy from a raised decking area above the arena, bacon bap in one hand, coffee in the other, with the Dorset undulate beyond. Meanwhile, my wife does her Saturday shift at her new post in one of the local boarding schools. I don’t try too hard to dispel the smug shroud of hubris that envelopes me as I slurp my latte in the morning sun. Later, we all meet up in Wareham, a gorgeous little town I’ve previously driven through but never stopped to admire. We enjoy a late lunch at The Old Granary on the quay, taking in the views of the River Frome. As the sun sets, we pick up some chunky birthday sirloins from the Salt Pig delicatessen before heading back to the cottage.
This, my wife tells me, is why we have made the right decision in moving to Dorset
Sunday finds us in wellies, striding out towards Winspit. Initially reluctant to be torn away from Roblox (“Dad – how many times? It’s not called ‘Roadblocks’”), The Boy is won over once he clocks a herd of Jerseys in the fields surrounding the short path to the clifftop. As he takes pictures on his phone, the bovines stare back, chewing balefully. On the return leg, as if we’d planned the whole jaunt, The Boy spots his second favourite creatures (behind horses but ahead of cows): four young deer that, from a safe distance, gingerly pick their way through the shrub land to eye this curious young stranger. In motionless awe, he stands on a rock and watches them leap away over the purple gorse.
This, my wife tells me, is why we have made the right decision in moving to Dorset.
We find a fork in the oath and it’s tempting to walk on to St Aldem’s Head. But our Sunday roastie is beckoning in the little oven back at the cottage, and if we get back now, we have time to sneak in a cheeky aperitif at The Square and Compass pub before we dig in. This, our new local, is a mere stone’s throw away from the cottage; and I declare it is one of the finest pubs in England. In the three days the four of us being here, this is already our third visit. It is a place worthy of a future blog post all by itself.
These last few days have been the best birthday weekend retreat ever – and they have set the bar for every weekend over the next three months or so that we are lucky enough to live in Worth Matravers.
On Monday morning though, reality seeps in. It’s my first commute back to my teaching job in Salisbury, and it heralds a week that doesn’t quite go to plan. The drive from Worth to Salisbury is so beautiful and, at that hour in the morning, relatively traffic-free. Switching on the radio, though, the political ponderings of Radio 4’s Today programme clash with the sheer eloquence of the ancient fields, hedgerows and longbarrows that creep from the waking dawn for miles around. It’s difficult to know which to listen to.
My plan has been to break up what could be a draining daily commute by stopping at my mother’s in Salisbury on Monday and Tuesday nights, to return to my wife and The Boy on the Wednesday. Driving there and back on the two remaining days would not seem so bad, I reflect, with the lure of such lovely weekends ahead. In this, the very first week of the experiment though, I’m hit with sudden severe stomach pains on the Tuesday night at Mum’s; and by 9pm, I have been triaged and am on the verge of having an emergency ambulance whisk me to Salisbury District Hospital. The next day is the one I’d set aside to oversee our household furniture and possessions being transferred from removal lorries to The Shack in West Lulworth. That’s not going to happen. Gallantly, my wife steps into the fray with her typical lack of fuss and good grace.
My mother is Salisbury’s answer to Gillian McKeith
Back in Salisbury, while it’s lovely of Mum to put up with me for a couple of nights a week indefinitely (and now a self-pitying, sickly me to boot), the experience gives me bleak flashbacks to other moments when I thought I’d left the familial home for good but hadn’t. In the mirror, I see a gaunt, depressed and jobless ne’er-do-well stare back. Me at twenty-one. He is hauling the burden of five sacks of dirty laundry, a scathing sense of superiority and very little in the way of conversation. Now, present me finds that her fridge, Mother Hubbard-like, is virtually bare (not that this matters so much when you have stomach issues) and that watching TV is fine as long as you’re a committed fan of Martin Clunes, Matt Baker and Alex Jones. And because I’m ill, I find Mum leaping to her feet every time I move, like I was still her little boy – which of course, in many ways, I am. ‘Shall I get that light switch for you, love?’ and ‘You’re not stepping onto that cold bleddy lino floor without your slippers on?’ Apparently, I need to ‘keep my fluids up’ and ‘can’t keep going for weeks on end without getting some nice hot food inside you’. As I sit on the sofa, clutching my stomach, she places an opened packet of Taverner’s Mint Humbugs on the coffee table. Clearly, my mother is Salisbury’s answer to Gillian McKeith. Heading out to the doctor’s, I am told to button my coat up as ‘you don’t want to be catching your death of cold on top of everything else’. I swear to God that all mothers from the late 60s and early 70s work from the same script.
So I type this new post on my sick bed- but I’m beginning to feel better. And I’m eager to get back to my wife and The Boy in South Dorset before the weekend is upon us. That after all, dear friends, is where the home lies.
©Craig Ennew 2025
- New Year’s Eve, Lulworth Cove
- Coincidence?
- St Oswald’s Bay, Jurassic Coast
- Autumn at The Fells
- West Lulworth, Dorset
- Thirty-Eight: Two Legs Good, Eight Legs Bad
- Sherborne, Dorset
- Thirty-Seven: In for the Long Haul
- Petronas Towers, KL, Malaysia
- Batu Caves, KL, Malaysia
- Chinatown, KL, Malaysia
- Thirty-Six: All Going East!
- Redang Beach Resort, Malaysia
- Coral Island Resort, Redang
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Thirty-Five: A Farewell to the Close
- Thirty-Four: Windows and Doors
- The Boat Shed Cafe, Lulworth Cove
- The Fells, West Lulworth
- Thirty-Three: Old Friends
- Moreton, near Dorchester
- Thirty-Two: Bottled Up
- Lulworth Cove, Dorset
- Thirty-One: Another One Fights the Dust
- The Fells, West Lulworth: BBQ with a view
- Lulworth Cove: our first night
- Leaving Worth Vegas!
- Thirty: Channelling Alan
- The Garden of ‘The Shack’, West Lulworth, Dorset
- Twenty-Nine: Worth its Weight in Gold
- From the Cove looking towards Portland Bill, West Lulworth
- Twenty-Eight: Schools for Thought
- Dancing Ledge, Purbeck
- Bridport, Dorset
- West Bay, Dorset
- Arne RSPB Nature Reserve, Dorset
- Moors Valley Country Park, Dorset
- Twenty-Seven: Spring Forwards, Fall Back
- Twenty-Six: The Square and Compass
- Twenty-Five: About a Boy
- Twenty-Four: The ‘A’ Word
- The Priest’s Way, Swanage
- Twenty-Three: Why did the chicken jump on the trampoline?
- Twenty-Two: The Shape of Sundays
- Twenty-One: Who’s Gonna Drive You Home?
- Twenty: Keep the Change, Ya Filthy Animal
- Nineteen: A Fork in the Road
- Wareham, Dorset
- Eighteen: Elephants and Coat-hangers
- Seventeen: There is a Light…
- Sixteen: Twas the Night Before Christmas
- Fifteen: Christmas in Limboland
- Fourteen: Goodbyes
- Thirteen: Jumping at the Cupboard Knobs
- Twelve: When Good Neighbours Become Good Friends
- Eleven: A Cackle of Hyenas
- Ten: Turning the Page
- Durdle Door, Dorset
- Nine: A Wait on Our Minds
- Eight: Clouds on the Horizon
- Seven: The Naked Man Story
- Six: All Pets are Off
- Five: Space Exploration
- Four: Bungalows and Builders
- Three: Bland Designs
- Two: Killing Pianos
- One: Funky Little Shack
All Going South 
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