Poole Unitary Authority

Walk Details:
Date: 17/9/2005
Total ascent: 3m/ 10ft
Total distance walked: 0.41 miles
Walk difficulty: 0/10
Enjoyment rating: 2/10
Best bits: Nice views from golf course
Worst bits: Disappointingly small "Stone"
Walkers: Anth, Jim
Car Parking: We parked at the roadside in Widworthy Drive, just a couple of dozen metres from the top.

Top details:
Name: Corfe Hills
County top number: 97 of 204
Grid reference: SY 99840 96620
Height above sea level: 78m/ 256ft
How nice was the top? 1/10
Views: 3/10
Description/Notes: The highest point in Poole Unitary Authority is an indeterminate point on Higher Blandford Road

The Walk:

Widworthy Drive seemed quite posh, and as left the car in our walking gear holding aloft we could almost hear the twitching of curtains in the hands of the local neighbourhood watch.

The OS spot height that we'd taken as the unitary top was just a few metres around the corner, near the entrance to a school on the B3074 Higher Blandford Road. There was no traffic and there were even a few flowers - it was certainly more pleasant than we'd expected, but perhaps it just seemed nice when compared to the previous dire top at Bournemouth.

We'd previously decided to extend our walk by a few hundred metres from this top to visit a mildly intriguing feature on the OS 1:10,000 scale map, marked simply as "Stone". I fondly imagined it to be some giant monolith, sadly fallen to the ground (hence it wasn't labelled as "Standing Stone").

We strode confidently down a public footpath into a golf course and then tiptoed nervously off the path and around the edge of a fairway towards our slab. I almost immediately saw a foot-high gravestone a couple of hundred yards away, in the right position for the "Stone". I refused to believe that something so insignificant could warrant a mention on an OS map, and in fact initially thought that it must be a golf teeing-off point or something of that ilk. It turned out to be an old carved parish boundary marker. I still spent some time searching in nearby undergrowth for a more impressive chunk of rock before finally spotting that the "Stone" on the map was not written in the OS's antiquities font, and admitting that the boundary marker must be the "Stone".

Still, if the Stone itself was disappointing, we were somewhat compensated by some pleasant views across the golf course to low rolling tree-lined hills in the distance. We felt our walk was justified, and walked back to the car savouring the cool fresh air of a sunny September morning, and discussing the assiduousness of the Ordnance Survey's surveyors.