Waking up at the seafront | Camping in Dorset (pt1)
As you can tell we love Dorset. We’ve had a chance to visit this beautiful county several times in the past. It’s known for the Jurassic Coast, along stretch of the English Channel where the cliffs contain many fossils, and rock formation show millions of years of geological history.
Swanage
Parking: BH19 2FA
Let’s start from the beginning because this time we decided to do something different. Our campsite was booked for Saturday afternoon but decided to leave on a Friday evening. If you’re a parent do you know that the best time for road trips is when your kiddo is due a nap. We went to step further and decided to leave the house at our usual bedtime (8pm). We had a bath, brushed our teeth, put Ziggy into his pyjamas and we were off. He obviously didn’t fall asleep straight away, he was too excited for the journey but 20 minutes later he was fast asleep…. In fact it was the best decision ever, traffic was very light, M25 was almost empty and it took us only 2 1/2 hours to get to Dorset when normally it takes us 4-5 hours with all the traffic jams. The plan was to go to Swanage (located about 30 minutes from our campsite) because I found place on Park4night app where we were able to park our van at the seafront and stay there for night. We were a little bit anxious because we’ve never done it before. Never ever slept on the street in a parking lot either. We arrived at our destination 10:30 at night, hoping to find a space for our 5metres long home on wheels…. And we were so happy when we found one last empty space! We transferred Ziggy onto our van bed. Location was nice although it was a little bit loud because we didn’t realise the parking was situated right next to the pub so as you can imagine it was pretty loud. But it wasn’t terrible and we were tired. We knew that we will only be there for the night, as we were due to leave for an adventure first thing in the morning and had to be gone by 8am. You can imagine Ziggy‘s excitement when he woke up in the morning and saw the sea right in front of our van. It was a beautiful sunny day, Buster went for a morning swim, we spent few minutes just staring at the sea, but it was time to leave.
Studland Bay, near Swanage, Dorset
Parking: National Trust - Knoll Beach, Knoll Beach Centre, Ferry Rd, Swanage BH19 3AQ
We headed to the area of Knoll beach , wich is an amazing hidden gem of Dorset not far from old Harry Rocks. We parked at a National Trust car park, weather was amazing because we there at crazy o’clock in the morning the beach was still shut, so we had to queue and wait for few mintues for the gates to open. Beach was pretty much empty. We’ve had our breakfast in the van followed by a morning coffee too (obviously).
We’ve spent half a day at the beach, Ziggy finally experienced a sandy beach and he loved it. Unfortunately we all had colds and decided not to go for a swim. Buster on the other hand wasn’t leaving the water….
It was a great day but it was time to head to our campsite. On the way to Norden Farm we noticed traffic heading towards the seaside and we were glad that we left the day before. So it’s quite good to have a van which you can park everywhere and sleep anywhere and have a coffee on the side of the road or a beach front.
Check out my next post to see where we went next.
