Filters
You may have noticed the massive embankment of pebbles as you came across the Causeway.
This is an 18 mile beach created by a 7000 mile fetch. The fetch is the distance that the wind can blow across water without encountering land.
- Wreckers would use their lights to confuse ships so they would be washed up on the beach and the cargo stolen.
- Local fisherman who were washed onto the beach could tell where they were because the pebbles are big at one end and very small at the other.
- A massive overnight storm in 1834 caused destruction throughout the UK. Portlanders’ awoke the next morning to find a three masted boat had been washed over the bank and was floating in the Fleet Lagoon.
- Ian McEwans book ‘Chesil Beach’ is set here, as is ‘Moonfleet’ by Faulkner, named after a village on the edge of the lagoon (called The Fleet)
- When Barnes Wallis needed somewhere to test his bouncing bomb, made famous by the The Dambusters, he used the fleet.
- The Fleet has an Oyster Farm at the Crab House Café or grab a coffee at Billie Winters
- If you want to see lots of picture of wrecks on Chesil Beach then head to the Cove House Inn which is on the beach and has a glorious sunset.
There is a visitors centre along the causeway onto the Island where you can park and walk along the Fleet Lagoon.
