Summertime on England’s South Coast conjures up images of sunny days on golden beaches and towns filled with tourists clutching ice-creams. But Christchurch, Poole and Bournemouth, with their Jurassic coastline and idyllic countryside, reveal an entirely different charm when visited out of season.
In mid-November, when I took my trip, the normally bustling resorts offered crowd-free tranquillity. Plus there are superb bargains to be found at restaurants and hotels, as they look to attract visitors. The entire region’s landscape is a geological marvel, but it’s not just for fossil hunters. With fewer crowds, the region’s treasures – incredible nature reserves, galleries and restaurants – become more intimate and inviting.
We started in Poole, which is known for its beautiful harbour and busy quay rather than what is dockside. Look beyond the boats and you’ll see the resort is filled with treats, including Poole Museum and adjacent Scaplen’s Court, a medieval merchant’s house with stunning gardens. It’s undergoing a £10.3million redevelopment, supported by funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and is set to reopen this summer.
After my safety training, I donned a high-vis vest and hard hat to explore the site, which will remain free to enter. Situated between the quay and Old Town, the transformation will turn the museum into a community hub telling the story of the harbour from the Ice Age until now.
It will feature incredible artefacts, including an Iron Age log boat and a large collection of Poole Pottery. There are also plans to install a seven-metre walrus tusk on the ground floor that will sweep upwards to the top floor. Afterwards, we walked for miles following the numbered cockle plaques (there’s 82 in total) around the Old Town, which uncovers the town’s seafaring exploits with sailors and smugglers. Outside the quaint Custom House, we learned how a gang of 60 armed smugglers battered down the door to retrieve a lot of contraband tea in 1747. Several were later captured and hanged.
Strolling along the Quay, we passed a statue of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, who inspired millions worldwide. His saying, “Life without adventure would be deadly dull”, aptly sums up the opportunities in Poole.
It would be a shame to visit such a seafaring place and not enjoy some of the local cuisine, so we had dinner at Rockfish, owned by seafood guru Mitch Tonks. Prices for mains start at £16.95. It offers sustainable fish and chips, so I stuck to the classic –
line-caught Icelandic haddock and unlimited chips (£23.95), with a pot of curry sauce on the side, after a huge vat of mussels to start (£11.95). My dining partner ordered sardines and an utterly delicious Dover sole that separated effortlessly from the bone.
Our base for the trip was the Captain’s Club in Christchurch, a truly shipshape boutique hotel, staying in a plush family suite with two bedrooms, a huge kitchen, and living room with floor-to-ceiling windows and incredible views of the River Stour. Each morning we enjoyed a lavish breakfast in the family-friendly restaurant. The elegant spa with a hydrotherapy bath is popular, so ensure you book treatments early.
One of the best parts of our trip was exploring Hengistbury Head, an incredible clifftop nature reserve. Standing 118ft above sea level, the site of special scientific interest offers panoramic views along the coast across to the Isle of Wight. A popular dog-walking spot for locals, archaeologist Dr Hayden Scott-Pratt told us how the reserve has around 12,500 years of continuous human history.
On the day we visited, volunteers were working on an Iron Age roundhouse built using traditional tools. The volunteers’ passion was infectious as I poked my head inside and found myself transported back thousands of years, while locals painted murals on the walls. Volunteer Ildiko showed me the wool they’d sheared from the small herd of sheep on site, which they dye using the reserve’s plants.
Around 10% of the annual 1.2million visitors stop inside the visitors’ centre to learn more about the reserve, so a new walking trail will be launched in time for summer, in a bid to highlight the incredible history and surrounding geological make-up. To warm up afterwards, we visited Russell-Cotes gallery in Bournemouth, a beautiful and eccentric Victorian building with a garden overlooking the sea. Admission is £9.50 for adults and £5 for children aged from five to 17.
The house, created by hotelier Merton Russell-Cotes for his wife Annie, features lots of treasures including Art Nouveau tiled ceilings, a terrace offering panoramic sea views and Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
It’s not very busy, which gave us ample time to pause over the cornucopia of treasures the couple picked up while travelling the world. The quirky home was one of our visit highlights, with the museum continuing to champion the couple’s ethos to promote art with an exhibition featuring depictions of Purbeck throughout the 20th century.
We finished the day with a delicious dinner at Nusara Thai, in Christchurch, including a half rack of spiced ribs, followed by a rich, intense dish of Gai Yeng, made with slow-cooked and grilled chicken thighs in a smoky sweet sauce.
My dining partner opted for the excellent massaman lamb shank. The next day we took a tour of the clifftop Highcliffe Castle, built for Lord Charles Stuart de Rothesay in 1836. More of a stately home than a castle, his unimpressed wife hoped it would fall into the sea after first seeing it, but grew to appreciate it.
It was rendered derelict after two fires in the 1960s destroyed most of it, but its Gothic Revival architecture has been painstakingly restored.
Our guided tour, led by Kelly, included the usually off-limits areas. It’s a fascinating chance to learn more about the life of Harry Selfridge, the American-born founder of the department store, who rented it for £5,000 a year, while spending his fortune on gambling and women.
After the tour, we headed to the tea room for cake and pot of tea, before an amble around the grounds that run down to the beach. An out-of-season trip to the South Coast gave us the chance to relax in lush, crowd-free surroundings, discover its fascinating past and take in the sights of its world-famous coastline.
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- Rooms at the Captain’s Club hotel in Christchurch, Dorset, start at £179 a night, B&B. captainsclubhotel.com
- More info on Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole’s new downloadable walking trails at explorebcp.co.uk
