Travel Special – Dorset: The glories of the West

Tilly Ware explains why she’s still in love with the landscape of her childhood – and you should be, too

My husband, three sons and I march single file along the grassy ridge, spotlit by the last of the low winter sun, the holly and hazel trees below already beginning to blacken. High up and alone on Eggardon hillfort in West Dorset, we have left the half-dozen other visitors steaming up their windscreens at the roadside viewpoint and slalomed up and down four sets of ramparts until we stand right on the outermost rim.

There’s a good chance of spotting attacking Romans: my sons have their stick-daggers poised. But I’m not paying attention. The 20-mile view keeps dragging my eyes upwards and outwards. Eggardon was dug around 3,000 years ago with antler bones, flints and bare hands. It is one of a constellation of Iron Age hillforts — Lewesdon, Pilsdon, Abbotsbury — that surround Bridport. Each has a flat top, and each are visible from the summit of the others. And in between, the land ripples and wriggles, cluttered with small fields, fat hedges and farms that spill into narrow lanes.

To the south, west and east, rumpled greenery rises and falls until it bumps into the bow curve of Chesil Beach, and the sea. Facing the waves are the cliff faces. I mentally tick them off: the bald patch on Golden Cap, West Bay’s grey shale, Burton’s beer-coloured sandstone. Finally, the Knoll, with a quiff of pine trees. Tucked into the leeward slope, with its back to the sea is the village of Puncknowle. My eyes lock on to a pair of beech trees, now only just visible in the gloaming. Under these is the house in which I was born and grew up.