Walk 5 - The Little Sea Nature
and Naturists

A level walk with haunting views of the Little Sea (Studland’s well-kept secret) and its wild-life. The approach is via the heath, returning along the beach with optional detours along the two official Nature Trails. You can interrupt your walk with a trip across to Sandbanks on the chain ferry, and a cup of tea at the Haven; you may well then decide to cheat by taking the bus back. The shorter route takes 2 hours in all if you’re very brisk and don’t stop to admire; another hour if you decide to go as far as the ferry and walk back, or of course there is the bus.

Local Walks
Agglestone
Old Harry Rocks
Ballard Down
Swanage
Little Sea
Fishing Barrow
Rempstone Forest
Ower Quay
Corfe Castle

Going to Shell Bay and back along the shore is straightforward but lacks variety; the route that follows is a circular one that takes in the Little Sea, a stretch of water that few K.H. guests visit.

Go to Starting Point 2, but don’t take the Agglestone fork to the left; carry straight on up the sanded bridleway until you come to a complicated junction where the path that you’re on (from Studland to Greenland) crosses the old track to the ferry going to the right: follow it. On your right you will see two bunkers set in the hillside, from which the fall of artillery was watched during the exercises that took place here as training for the Normandy landings.

After a mile or so it reaches the main road: cross it, and take the path opposite leading up to higher ground: after a few yards there is a junction, and you take the leftward track that runs roughly parallel to the road through ferny scrub, with woods to your right. Hidden behind those woods lies the Little Sea, a freshwater lake more than a mile in length that a hundred years ago was open to the sea but is now joined to it by a single stream issuing from its northern end. For the next half-mile or so you will see a number of paths off to the right leading to the edge of the lake, often to hides for observing the wildlife.

One cannot help being struck by the eerie quiet and other-worldliness of this secret water; when my wife and I first visited it we both thought at once of the reed- fringed lake where King Arthur meets his end; only later did we discover the local tradition that it was indeed here that Sir Bedivere cast Excalibur into the waters. (Impossible, in fact, since in King Arthur’s time the lake did not exist at all). Here can be seen some of the 2,000 wild ducks that spend the summer on the Little Sea, as well as widgeon, teal, mallard, little grebe, Bewick’s swan, coot, moorhen and other species. Continuing past a conspicuous and magnificent rowan, the path turns left towards the road, then continues alongside it. After a hundred yards or so, an opening to the right leads on to a secluded and winding woodland path still roughly parallel to the road, that finally opens on to the "nudist path", that leads from the road across the dunes to the beach. Follow it to the right.

Notice the succession of parallel ridges separated by marshy valleys or slacks, the result of a cycle in which sand is blown inland, colonised by plants that bind it and act as an obstruction that traps more sand, and so on until a complete ridge forms. The youngest of the present ridges, nearest the beach, is only fifty years old; the next perhaps a hundred years older, and so on. If you look at the 1586 map in the Cocktail Bar you can see for yourself how dramatically the topography of this area has been changing.

Eventually you will come to a junction to the left. Were you to continue straight on to the beach, you would arrive in the middle of the nudist area, with a decision to make. You could turn left towards Shell Bay and perhaps take the chain ferry across to Sandbanks where tea - not up to K.H. standards - can be had at the Haven Hotel, followed by an equally self-indulgent bus-ride back (No. 150, twenty to the hour on weekdays, and Sundays in the summer). You could in fact have reached the same destination more directly by taking the broad leftward route at this point through the duned hinterland.

Or on reaching the beach you could turn right and walk along the shore, perhaps with a diversion to visit the Sand Dunes Nature Trail which starts a mile further on. The entrance is marked by a yellow-capped post (A). You then follow the trail that is marked with further yellow-topped posts; to make the most of it you should previously have bought the guide, 50p from the National Trust shop. A different trail - the Woodland Nature Trail (B) - starts from the right-hand side of the beach road, just before the car-park kiosk: walk along the rough track until you see the sign at the start. Again, you will want to buy the corresponding booklet first.