Twenty-nine kilometres of shingle, piled high and steep and running almost dead straight from West Bay to the Isle of Portland: Chesil Beach is one of the great natural oddities of the English coast. Behind it lies the Fleet, a long, shallow, brackish lagoon full of eelgrass and birds, and the whole system is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. The pebbles grade in size along the beach, small as peas at the western end and as big as potatoes towards Portland, so precisely that smugglers landing on dark nights were said to know where they were by the feel of the stones.
That smuggling past fed J. Meade Falkner's novel Moonfleet, set along this shore, and the old fishing communities still haul boats up the shingle in places. At Abbotsbury, at the western end of the Fleet, the swannery founded by Benedictine monks centuries ago still keeps a large colony of mute swans, and the stark chapel of St Catherine sits on its hill above the village. Ferrybridge, at the Portland end, is where most people first walk up onto the bank and hear that particular roar of waves dragging stones.
The B3157 between Weymouth, Abbotsbury and Bridport is the riding reason to be here, and it is one of the finest coast roads in southern England. West of Abbotsbury it climbs onto the downs and gives you the whole sweep of Chesil and Lyme Bay laid out below, with fast, open bends and some steep dips where the road crosses combes. It is popular, which means caravans in summer, plenty of cyclists and a firm police interest in speed. Midweek in spring or early autumn, with low sun over the sea, it is hard to beat.
Weymouth, eight kilometres away, has fuel, food and everything else; Bridport at the other end does too. Abbotsbury has tearooms and a pub and makes a civilised halfway halt. Swimming off Chesil is not for casual dips: the beach shelves very steeply and the undertow is notorious, so enjoy the water from the top of the bank. Sea mist can roll in quickly here even on bright days and turn the road damp and grey within minutes.