Adventure and adventurers > Black's guide to Dorsetshire

Route 1.
POOLE.
downs; one running from north-east to south-west, its highest
elevation being reached at Pulharrow, 927 feet; the other fol¬
lowing the coast-line from Beaminster to Swanage, and rising at
Blackdown to 813 feet, meet towards the west and form “ the
trough of Poole,” where sands and clays overlie the chalk, and
touch the extremes of the Oolitic and Wealden beds. The Tertiary
deposits, chiefly plastic clay, extend from the hills beyond Poole
to Dorchester ; the Chalk, as we have seen, forms two hold and
picturesque ranges of a considerable elevation; the Greensand
stretches westward beyond Beaminster, its highest point being
Pillesdon Pen, 934 feet; the Wealden occupies the Isle of Pur-
beck, and the Oolitic strata are most conspicuous in the Isle of
Portland. The coast scenery, from the variety of the strata dis¬
played between Studland and Lyme Regis, is of a singularly
interesting and romantic character, and the explorations of the
geologist will be rewarded with an abundance of remarkable
fossils.
ROUTE I.—-Along the Coast from POOLE to
LYME REGIS.
[Poole to Durlston Head, 10 m.; St. Aldhelm’s Head, 5 m.; Kimmeridge Bay,
4 m. ; Weymouth, 15 m.; Portland Bill, 7 m. ; Ahbotsbury, 10 m.; Bridport, 9 m.;
Lyme Regis, 7 m.]
POOLE—i.e., the Harbour.
[Pop. 9255.—Inns: Antelope, London Hotel, etc.
2 m. from the Junction Point on the Southampton and Dorchester Point of the
London and South-Western Railway; 122 m. from London; 2 m. from Branksea
Castle; 7 m. from Bournemouth; 10 m. from Christchurch ; 8 m. from Wareham ;
26 m. from Dorchester; 8 m. from Wimbome.
Mabket Days—Monday and Thursday. Bank—National Provincial.
Kg' Omnibuses daily between Poole and Bournemouth.]
The situation of Poole is in many respects a remarkable one.
Let the reader picture to himself a range of hills sloping abruptly
into broad wild tracts of heath and furze ; a tongue of land
projecting out of these into a vast harbour, a portion of which to
the northward (Holes Bat), it almost shuts off by a swing
bridge—red-brick houses clustering upon this tongue of land in
admirable disorder, with one long thoroughfare—the High Street,
running through them to terminate at the aforesaid bridge ;
let him line the shore with capacious quays, two miles in length,