St. Catherine's Chapel

We have travelled the coast road many times and have always been intrigued by a lone chapel sitting high on a hill above Abbotsbury. We chose it as our destination for Saturday's hike.

Standing some 280 ft. above the sea, St. Catherine's Chapel has long served seafarers as a landmark on this dangerous coast. It was built around the beginning of the 15th century as a pilgrim's chapel for the nearby monestery and is constructed entirely of stone that had to be hauled up the hillside from the quarries below. It's in surprisingly good shape, and services are still held inside. They sometimes have night services where everyone carries a flashlight up the trail. That must be an amazing sight.

Partway up the terraced hillside we came to an enclosed field filled with pheasants. We had previously spotted a few pheasants (always a thrill) as we drove along remote roads, but this was clearly different. Not only were there hundreds of them, but they did not take flight when they spotted us. They just scurried away on foot! We concluded that this was a sort of pheasant farm and that they were being raised for the bespoke tables of London and Paris. I mentioned this to an English lady I was talking with yesterday, and she had another explanation. She said that pheasants are raised for sport shooting. They are kept indoors and fed by humans. Then, at about this time of year, they are released into pens to begin their transition from domesticated to wild birds. When hunting season begins in a few weeks, wealthy bird hunters will start arriving from all over the world. Personnel at the lodges where they stay will take them to strategically located hunting spots, where they will wait in hopes of bagging their prey. Just over the ridge, bird handlers will release a flock of pheasants, and Bam! I guess it's no different from walking among the lambies by day and then sitting down to a lamb shank at dinner, but somehow I didn't like the sounds of it.

This hike started in Abbotsbury along a stretch of Chesil Beach, the same Chesil Beach I have written of earlier. It begins on the Isle of Portland and extends to West Bay, some seventeen miles to the west. From an earlier picture, you may remember the size of the "pebbles" we saw in Portland: they were roughly the size of a fist. What is interesting about this beach is that the size of the pebbles decreases as you travel west. In Abbotsbury they're the size of the last joint of your thumb, and in West Bay they're no bigger than your thumb nail. It is said that smugglers coming ashore by night can tell exactly where they are by the size of the pebbles! Another interesting thing is that when huge storms blow through they can erode Portland's banks, carrying its pebbles miles down the beach. In time, however, the action of the waves and tides will sort the pebbles and return each to its proper location.