Exploring the Bournemouth Coast Path

The new year 2007 opens with the news that planning permission to replace the Point House Cafe in Southbourne with cliff top flats has been refused.

Bournemouth Planning Committee rejected the plan during a sitting on the Thursday before Christmas.

More than 800 objections were sent to the Council and Bournemouth East MP Tobias Ellwood has joined the fight to save the popular cafe. The Southbourne Area Forum has also expressed concern.

The Council’s decision does not safeguard the present building and it is understood that owners Ray and Dorothy Fletcher have yet to consider any other options.

Normal service has been resumed by Sandbanks Ferry after a break of six weeks.

This was double the expected length of closure due to a refit at Southampton. Bad weather made both repainting difficult and voyages to and from The Solent.

The Sandbanks Ferry, which left the Poole Harbour entrance a month ago, has still not returned from its refit in Southampton.

There is now no published date for the resumption of the ferry service.

Sandbanks will continue to be without its ferry until at least Monday 4 December.

The vessel’s refit in Southampton has progressed with difficulty due to severe wet weather which has prevented the final coat of paint from being applied.

The next tidal opportunity to re-float the ferry is on Saturday 2 December but meeting this new deadline depends on weather conditions this week and the prevailing winds next weekend.

Sandbanks Ferry will not be operating on Monday 20 November as expected and may not return to service until later in the week.

The refit of the vessel at Southampton has involved more work than expected.

The return sailing down the Solent and across Poole Bay is subject to weather and sea conditions.

The Point House Cafe in Southbourne is to close this month.

The cafe, the last building at the eastern end of the Bournemouth cliff near Hengistbury Head, is very popular with walkers wishing to pause
at the end of the 9 mile cliff section of the coast path.

When the whitewashed cafe first opened in 1963 it served walkers and beach visitors for twelve hours a day in summer. At present it is only open at weekends and but now it has been announced that its last day of trade will be Sunday 26 November.

Owners Ray and Dorothy Fletcher are selling the building due to old age according their son Richard.

Harrison Developments are seeking planning permission to replace the cafe with a four storey block of flats with underground parking.

Residents have expressed dismay at the news. Peter Walker, who runs the Kalbarri bed and breakfast opposite, says that he will be sorry to see the cafe go.

Alex James, bass guitarist for Blur, has been a regular customer often praising the cheese on toast.

Just four years ago Point House Cafe was used as a location for The Project, a BBC television drama about New Labour starring Ian McFadden.

Sandbanks Ferry, which links the Dorset Coast Path to the Bournemouth Coast Path, will be out of action from Monday 23 October to Sunday 19 November.

The vessel is due to make rare journey pulled by two tugs to Southampton for a three week refit which will include cleaning and repainting. This is the quietest period for traffic before the winter when sailing along the coast and painting is often more difficult.

The 150 Wilts & Dorset bus service which uses the ferry route will operate as a shuttle between Sandbanks and Bournemouth. Routes 142/143 which run from Swanage to Poole via Wareham will be extended to Studland and Bournemouth.

Barry Gardiner MP, Minister for Biodiversity, Landscapes and Rural Affairs, discussed the Solent coastline when he visited the New Forest to mark its designation as a national park.

The recently redrawn New Forest boundary runs almost to the Bournemouth Coast Path at Milford-on-Sea and embraces the start the Solent Way on Pennington Marshes.

The minister, having received a briefing from the New Forest National Park Authority at Queen’s House in Lyndhurst about the main challenges facing the Park, met key partners including the Verderers over lunch in the historic Verderers’ Hall.

Afterwards Mr Gardiner went on a short tour of the Beaulieu Road area in the south of the Forest led by members and senior staff from National Park Authority. Issues highlighted included coastal access and climate change.

Lindsay Cornish, Chief Executive of the National Park Authority, said: “As England’s newest, smallest and most densely-populated National Park, the New Forest faces a number of unique challenges which we will need the Minister’s help to tackle. This visit gave us an ideal opportunity to show the Minister these challenges first-hand.”

A stretch of the Bournemouth Coast Path has been closed for the Conservative Party Conference.

The sloping clifftop path running from the Highcliff Hotel down to Bournemouth Pier will not reopen until late on Wednesday 4 October.

Walkers from the west are advised to go inland at St Michael’s Road and turn right at the main road to reach the bottom of the hill. The pier is to the right of the roundabout in front of the Royal Exeter Hotel.

The path closure is part of the £1.7m security operation to protect the conference which involves as many as 10,000 people present within the exclusion zone as representatives, observers, journalists, media workers, caterers and exhibition stallholders.

Television channels are planning to use the wide clifftop coastpath with its magnificent Poole Bay backdrop for reports and interviews.

“Detailed planning has ensured that Dorset Police is ready for the challenge of preventing terrorism and other threats through vigilance, high visibility patrols and the effective use of intelligence” says Superintendent David Griffith who is co-ordinating Operation Pegasus 2006.

Dorset Police has been joined by colleagues from Hampshire and the Channel Islands.

An exhibition at Mompesson House in Salisbury gives a glimpse of the Mudeford coast during Queen Victoria’s reign.

‘A Century in a Suitcase’ is an exhibition of paintings, sketchbooks and painted ceramics by Barbara Townsend (1842-1939), who lived at Mompesson House, in Salisbury’s cathedral close, for nearly a century.

The Townsend family’s seaside house was Gundimore at Mudeford near Christchurch to the south. Gundimore had been built in 1796 for 21 year old poet William Stuart Rose who designed a tented room. There he entertained fellow poets Coleridge and Southey. Sir Walter Scott stayed there whilst writing Marmion.

The Townsend family bought the house in 1859 when Barbara Townsend was a teenager and she continued to visit the seaside villa until her death at the start of the Second World War.

Throughout her life she painted daily except on Sundays and some of her watercolour landscapes were recently discovered in a case by her nephews.

The collection includes Boscastle in Cornwall and a lane in Dorset but several are of Mudeford.

In the Mompesson drawing room, on a table laid for tea with a fruit cake, there has long been a plate featuring a view out to sea with a tip of the sand bar to the right. It is dated 5 August 1886.

This is just five years after the Mudeford spit had begun to grow by turning west at the Black House, by the present Christchurch Harbour entrance. Eventually the long sand bar ran parallel to the Mudeford beach as far as Highcliffe Castle.

This created a long narrow harbour entrance which until a storm washed it away in March 1935, the year after Barbara Townsend inherited Gundimore at the age of 92.

The special exhibition now provides further views showing the spit and the Isle of Wight. One view painted in 1880 from the beach depicts the very new sand bar beyond a deep channel.

The Gundimore garden seems to have merged with the beach. All pictures look out to sea and one on a tile shows trees, with maybe pink blossom, on a very low cliff. Another has two garden chairs on the beach.

One watercolour called just ‘Gunnery Practice 1881′ showing ships on the horizon may well be Christchurch Bay. Another, labelled Mudeford, shows a moonlit scene with what appears to be tree stumps on the beach giving the impression of a henge.

The 1880 view is on sale as a postcard.

‘A Century in a Suitcase’ exhibition is at Mompesson House, a National Trust property, until 29 October; Sat-Wed 11am-5pm; admission £4.40.