Continuing the island theme, we have just spent the Christmas week in Swanage, on the Isle of Purbeck. This is, of course, not an island at all. Physically, it is very much a part of the mainland, although its particular geography means that there are only really two ways of getting to Purbeck, and one of them involves a ferry across the entrance to Poole Harbour.Even better, this island has a steam railway! And a pretty impressive one at that. And the bus service was not that bad either. There are hourly buses from Poole/Wareham and Bournemouth. The latter using the Sandbanks-Shell Bay chain ferry.
Swanage is English seaside on a nice small, genteel scale. OK, it is not as up-market as St Ives, and it obviously has its fair share of chav youth, but it does pretty well for a small seaside town. In high season, I would imagine that it is pretty awful, but in Decenmber it was actually OK, and the weather was still good enough for us to have some fun on the beach. Good choice all round I'd say. Though it helped that we had pretty good weather most of the time.
