What make Chesil Beach and the Fleet Special

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. 

1. Wreckers would use their lights to confuse ships so they would be washed up on the beach and the cargo stolen.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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)
5. When Barnes Wallis needed somewhere to test his bouncing bomb, made famous by the The Dambusters, he used  the fleet.
6. The Fleet has an Oyster Farm at the Crab House Café or grab a coffee at Billie Winters
7. 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.