DORSET - What's So Amazing About Poole?

Now, you see, the problem with having a blog about traveling rather than about yourself (except in passing) is that when you're not traveling, it gets rather hard to find things to write about. However, until I give in my stubborn insistence not to bore the world with my personal ramblings (and, really, it would be a very scary place. I mean, this is meant to be the more user friendly version of me and look how many incomprehensible, run on sentences I've managed this year) I shall remain on topic. And that topic today is Poole, Dorset.

Where? Ah yes. Run your finger along the southern coast of Britain west of Southampton and east of anything which looks like the end (like, y'know, Land's End) and eventually you'll find it. Poole has a few claims to fame. One of them is its natural harbour. Which may be the biggest, second biggest, or just one of the many biggest in the world. Which puts it on the same lists as Rio de Janerio, Sydney and San Francisco. Yeah! And then there's Brownsea Island in that aforementioned harbour, which is where Lord Baden Powell took some boys on a camping trip and decided it'd be a jolly good thing for every boy to know how to camp and so created the Scouting Movement. But, aside from these little contributions to the world stage, Poole has remained relatively out of the eye of the rest of humanity except those of us who live here or who used to visit an older relative here (which, based on the folks I've met over the past few years, seems to be the entire population of Bristol)


Boats!...

Poole is a great place to be a boat spotter. Having a large natural harbour (it's possibly the biggest in the world, so I've heard) means lots of boating potential. And of all types. From the mighty passenger ferries which daily make the five hour chug to Cherbourg to the tiny but fabulously expensive yachts, sitting watching the workings of the harbour has passed the minutes of many a long, cold afternoon. It's strangely restful; really. Poole, being a British sea side town, has a fine selection of tacky harbour side amusements to accompany your stay. Sadly the most interesting of the tourist traps (the fabulously dingy aquarium and the astonishingly overpriced model railway) have long since given way to trendy wine bars but, if you look hard enough, you can still find candy floss (cotton candy, Yankee readers) and 2p slot machines.

These devices, common in various forms throughout the world, give the pleasure of being wonderful and useless all at the same time. Like all such machines, you shove in 2p coins in the hope of being skillful enough to win more coins based on the way your coin falls. But, since all you can win are 2p coins and since 2p coins are useless apart from being used in 2p machines, the whole thing is nothing more than a glorious waste of time. In other words, typical British rainy day at the seaside entertainment. There are precisely five people in the world who find 2p machines tremendous fun. I'm glad to say that I am one of them, and that I know two of the others.


... and beaches! Incidentally, these pictures aren't the products of some seventies photo documentary of the town, but of my first and most awful digital camera and the days before I discovered that 'Night setting' you've all come to know and fear in my photography.

Should the sun ever appear in Poole (and it does for, literally, minutes in the summer) then you can go to the beaches. Miles and miles of lovely sandy beaches flying EU blue flags to demonstrate their cleanliness. Despite the fact, like many British beaches, you can't get over the fact that both the sand and the water seem to be tinged a dull grey colour. (Reminiscent of the Gangees at Rishikesh. I'd like to think that the British variant doesn't contain piles of ashes and decomposing body parts but, really, I can't be sure) As such, except in the height of midsummer you can always wander along Poole's beaches in relative peace. Especially in the middle of the night, lit only by moon and starlight.

Because, you see, that's really what's so amazing about Poole. Not the harbour, not the beaches: but the fact that not a lot of people know that it's all there. You can travel the world looking for beautiful solitude; but you're more likely to find it around 11pm out on the rocks at Sandbanks beach than pretty much anywhere else.