On Sunday, I finally got to visit Golden Cap, the highest point of the South West Coast path. And the views didn’t disappoint!

As the weather wasn’t the best on Sunday, and we weren’t ready until midday, we decided not to walk the coast path from Lyme Regis, Charmouth or Seatown. Instead we chose to drive to a National Trust car park at Langdon Hill, which has clear signage to Golden Cap. As we are NT members, parking was free, otherwise there is a small fee to park here.

From the car park, we walked along a fairly levelled old Forestry Commission path through woodland, giving us some beautiful views of the surrounding towns and countryside of Dorset. There were a few options of which routes you could take, we decided to first follow the route that took us to Golden Cap, through some fields then up some steps to the highest point of the coast path. There were also options to walk towards Seatown, a small coastal hamlet with a lovely pebble beach. Alternatively, we could have walked towards St Gabriels, a secluded medieval hamlet, between Lyme Regis and Bridport, which also had a beach below Golden Cap.

Once we had left the path through the woodland, we entered some fields that had grazing sheep in them. From here we could see our destination in front of us, a big hill which hosted Golden Cap at the top. From the fields, it looked like it was going to be quite the challenge, but once we started walking up the hill, it didn’t take us long to reach the top.

Once we had walked up quite a few steps, we reached the top, it had beautiful views overlooking Dorset, even though it wasn’t the clearest of days, we could still see Bridport, West Bay, Seatown, Lyme Regis, Charmouth and St Gabriel’s. We took in the views from the top, and checked out the trig point beacon they had here. I also stopped to check if there were any geocaches in the area, which of course there were! So we did a few on our way back down into the woods.

I did feel we had cheated a bit by walking up to Golden Cap via the car park, although we did walk nearly 4 miles in total that day. I have always wanted to walk the coast path from Lyme Regis to Golden Cap. But just visiting it was good enough for now, it’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while, especially when I can see it in the distance along the Jurassic Coast when I do the walk along the Devon Coast path.

As we walked back down the steps towards Langdon woods, we decided to walk a little bit towards Seatown. We entered a field full of cows, I couldn’t resist going over and introducing myself to them!

The views from here were just as impressive, being able to see Seatown beach more clearly. I haven’t visited Seatown before, mainly because the beach isn’t dog friendly, and most of the time when I’m out walking, I take the dog with me. But it is on the list of places to visit! There seemed to be a lot of walkers heading towards Seatown, and quite a few people walking along the stretch of the beach, so I can imagine it being quite busy in the summer. We have however, visited West Bay a few times, it’s best known for his famous golden cliff face that’s feature on ITV’s drama Broadchurch. West Bay is definitely worth visiting, its a lovely little harbour town with a pebble beach and popular seaside attractions.

The hill back up from these fields were more steep and hard going than the climb to Golden Cap! I was glad it was mostly downhill once we had reached the kissing gate. From here we then decided to walk around Langdon woods, do some geocaches and head back towards the car park via a circular walk.

As we walked through the woods, we were treated to the low autumn sun peeking through the trees. It also gave us some warmth on what was otherwise a cold November day. The dogs enjoyed being off lead here, exploring the area and greeting other dogs as they walked past. This area does appear to be popular with dog walkers and families. The National Trust have a map in the car park with ideas on what to do on this walk, as well as an outdoor ‘nature playpark’ for children next to the car park.

We arrived back to the car park just before sunset, there were other routes around the woodland that would have been quicker, but we enjoyed exploring the woods, and watching the sunset behind Golden Cap. There are some great geocaches dotted around that take you on a circular route through St Gabriel’s towards Golden Cap. We didn’t do all these today, but hopefully we’ll do them if we visit again. On our way back to the car, we read on the map in the car park about St Gabriel’s being an old medieval settlement. We regret not having time to visit this area. I’m now intrigued, and want to find out more! Unfortunately we ran out of time, but I definitely want to visit again and find out more about this area. I’m just really pleased I finally got to visit Golden Cap, as you can see by my face in the picture below…. (I was searching for geocaches at the time!) :)