Bright Winter from Corfe to Studland

Last year I passed through Corfe for the first time in many years, unreasonably moved by the grey Purbeck limestone of its cottages and the gaunt Castle looming above the village, but I hadn't gone on the road from there to Studland for a long, long while, and my Mum hadn't been out that way for longer than she could remember - possibly since my Dad was alive. We were there yesterday, for a bright, clear afternoon's drive through old haunts.

It's half-term week, so there were lots of families around though the village wasn't unbearably busy. I'd forgotten that the Museum in Corfe is just a single room!

On a whim we returned not via the way we came, through Wareham, but over the ferry that links Studland on the Purbeck side of Poole Harbour to Sandbanks on the northern side. I don't think I've ever actually taken my own car over the ferry, or at least I don't have a clear memory of having done so. The ferry was changed years ago from the exhilaratingly leaky, rusty vessel I remember from childhood journeys, with its great black spots on cables that shuttled up and down to indicate the direction the ferry was about to move in, but it's still fun. The chains clank and the engines grind into life to prepare you for the two-minute journey between the headlands, and there's still an exciting stink of fuel in the air.