Dorset
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Overview
Holiday hot spot Dorset offers a checklist of charms. Its shoreline is one of Britain’s best and boasts the Jurassic Coast – a World Heritage Site flecked with sea-carved bays, crumbly cliffs and beaches loaded with fossilised souvenirs. Swimming, kayaking and hiking here are memorable indeed. Inland, Thomas Hardy's lyrical landscape serves up vast Iron Age hill forts, rude chalk figures, fairy-tale castles and must-see stately homes. Then there are resorts alive with party animals, golden beaches flanked by millionaires' mansions, and sailing waters that have hosted Olympic events. Time then to add Dorset to your holiday list.
Attractions
Must-see attractions
Dorset
The massive, shattered ruins of Corfe Castle loom so dramatically from the landscape it's like blundering into a film set. The defensive fragments tower…
Dorset
Durdle Door is the poster child of Dorset's Jurassic Coast. This immense, sea-fringed, 150-million-year-old Portland stone arch was created by a…
Dorset
Dorset's must-see stately home looks every inch the setting for a period drama. It overflows with rich decor, most famously in the Spanish Room, which is…
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Dorset
Occupying a massive slab of horizon on the southern fringes of Dorchester, Maiden Castle is the largest and most complex Iron Age hill fort in Britain…
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Dorset
Portland's white limestone has been quarried for centuries and has been used in some of the world's finest buildings, such as the British Museum and St…
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Dorset
Rarely do you find such a nudge-nudge, wink-wink tourist attraction. Nude, full frontal and notoriously well endowed, this hillside chalk figure is…
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Dorset
The Thomas Hardy collection here is the world's largest, offering extraordinary insights into his creative process. You can see from text in Hardy's…
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Dorset
Every May some 600 free-flying swans choose to nest at this swannery, which shelters in the Fleet Lagoon, protected by the ridge of Chesil Beach…
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Best Things to Do
From prehistoric adventures on the Jurassic Coast to wildlife, culture and unexpected gems in the county’s picturesque interior, the only problem with choosing…
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Discover the best things to do in Dorset, from finding fossils to coastal hikesJul 18, 2022 • 7 min read
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