Tag Archives: fleet lagoon

Not packrafting the Fleet lagoon, Chesil Beach

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To all Mohunes
Of Fleet and Moonfleet
In agro Dorcestrensi
Living or dead

Moonfleet, 1960s edition

Recognise that epigraph? If you do you probably read John Meade Falkner’s Moonfleet (1898) as a conker-swinging nipper. Described as a ‘thrilling story of revenge and betrayal, of loyalty and great sacrifice, but … above all … friendship‘, I recall it being more of a ripping yarn with smugglers and treasure, set in mid 17th-century Dorsetshire or Dorcestrensi.

Like Enid Blyton in Swanage a few decades later, Wiltshire-born Falkner spent much of his time in a caravan park on the Dorset coast, and Moonfleet went on to be adapted into films (not least by Fritz Lang) as well as a few TV series. But to an 11-year-old none are as good as the book.

Fast forward half a century, I realise the 13-km long lagoon behind the pebblesome anomaly of Chesil Beach is known as the Fleet, as is a village along its shore, west of Weymouth. The novel includes many landmarks all the way to Purbeck and the Isle of Wight. That’s all the reason I needed to crack out the packraft and railcard.
But wait – are there restrictions?

Small-scale use of canoes and kayaks for paddling to the mid Fleet for enjoyment and the experience … is discouraged…
The Fleet seabed up to the mean high water mark is owned by the Ilchester Estates and part of the Reserve. The West Fleet is a closed, non-tidal area of water owned by the Estates and part of the Reserve. There are no boat slips bordering the Fleet that are open to the public. Boating in the mid Fleet is dissuaded as the water is shallow and the seabed comprises of soft, deep mud. There is also a tidal time lag … and strong winds … A military firing range is frequently in operation... It is hoped that the information below will reach potential boaters, … hopefully persuading them to reconsider their intentions. 

‘Not swans again’

They missed out plague, pillaging pirates and pepper-spraying pangolins. Turns out the Fleet is a nature reserve. The top of the lagoon (West Fleet) has been a swannery since King Cnut of England, Norway and Denmark who actually died in Dorset. Harold (‘1066’) owned the manor of Fleet which was later listed in the first edition of the Domesday Book.

Kitchen Scene (1616) Adriaen van Nieulandt

At that time swans were a substantial food source, farmed at the newly founded Benedictine abbey in present-day Abbotsbury at the top of the lagoon. During the Dissolution the abbey was dismantled and rebuilt as the new owner’s mansion, as were many dwellings in Abbotsbury.
By the mid-18th century, around the time of Moonfleet the new Earls of Ilchester established the Ilchester Estate which owns all you see here, including the Fleet seabed, not the Crown, as with most UK seashores.

Interestingly, the ancient Abbotsbury swannery is one of few where the Fowle Royale aren’t automatically owned by the monarch under Crown Prerogative, or Droit de Cygneur. Look at the West Fleet above and you’ll see the foreshore thick with the swan-necked fowl.

Given the questionable access for paddling, a foot recce was in order. We got off a bus at Chickerell and footpathed west towards Langton Herring, passing big, fat but not juicy sloe berries.

Langton Herring’s private slipway and the upper limit of ‘mid Fleet’. East of here prohibition becomes strong discouragement: … serious safety concerns [exist] even for the shallowest drafted craft in the mid Fleet: extensive intertidal mud-flats… some channels are a dead end … mud is too soft to walk on … impassable ‘flannel weed’.
They really don’t want you to get to the water, do they. Along the shore regular green signs like above remind you there is no public access to the ‘hazardous foreshore‘.
Additional signs warning of ‘quicksand’ on the shore. This was just like being on an English river!
The back side of Moonfleet Manor Hotel (formerly the Mohun’s Fleet House) would not win any awards.
Sorry love, you can’t sit there.
Green signs as thick as tangleweed – and an old jetty.
In East Fleet we visit the original church, part rebuilt after the 1824 storm which breeched the Chesil and funnelled a wave up the Fleet creek to demolish half the church. It’s said the real-life Mohuns are buried in the vaults below. In the book their coffins clank about on the rising tide to warn off superstitious folk. In fact it was also a stash for barrels of finest French brandy, the ‘Milk of Ararat’!
Old maps show causeways crossing the lagoon. Handy for bringing the tax-dodging plunder inland without getting wet.
Fleet and Moonfleet.
The Mrs and I debate vigorously about paddling the Fleet. ‘They clearly don’t want you on the water’ vs ‘They are not prohibiting it outright’. One trick the C&FNR miss is suggesting that the Fleet might be a bit boring to paddle, with the shingle bank obscuring sea views and general tidal sludge.
Kayaker ahead (not pictured)! They hack out across Butterstreet Cove (above) into the strong SW wind, then turn back.
They probably put in at East Fleet Farm campsite and interpreted the sign above as ‘paddlecraft not prohibited’. Interesting.
Round about here the maps show a mile of tidal mudflats to the southeast, just before the Narrows lead on to Portland. But the maps also indicate a permanent channel right alongside the Chesil shore. Stay on the Chesil side if in doubt.
More good news: it appears Chickerell Firing Range is ‘closed until further notice’, though with the way of the world right now, mobilisation might be round the corner so it would always pay to check.
Later on, an explanation for the litany of dissuasion and prohibition becomes clearer. The popular SWCP follows the Fleet’s north shore and is frequently busy, not least because it is probably one of the easiest, flattest days on the whole 600-mile walk. Those merry hikers need to be protected from inadvertent trespassing!
Littlesea Holiday Park’s list of Dangers & Prohibitions including ‘no inflatables’. Rats! Seems odd though, establishing a camp on the coast but with no access to the shore whatsoever and by whatever means. ‘Oh well, mustn’t grumble.’
At ‘Martleaves Bay’ near Weymouth the SWCP takes to the beach. Traumatised by fears of sinkmud, we hack inland though thick reeds and brambles, as other have done.
The Fleet Bridge linking Weymouth with Portland.

What about the matter of unravelling the tides so as not to get stranded on the cloying mudflats for 12.5 hours? The nearest datum is Portland Harbour into which the Fleet empties. I’d guess Portland + half an hour lag at Langton, but locals at the Ferry Bridge would known better.

Weymouth. Not walked 14 miles in many years.

Thinking it all over I realise I’ve fallen into the packrafters’ mentality of putting in to take out somewhere else, not the usual ‘there-and-back’ which heavy hardshells usually do. Asking online, access into the Fleet seems straightforward: put in at Ferry Bridge and paddle no further than Langton (8km) then paddle back without touching the sides. You’ve can’t say you’ve not been warned, so woe betide if you come a cropper in the mud flats, strangleweed, rip tides and all the rest.
Riding the tides may work, but you’re going to catch the wind one way, or more likely an all-day southwesterly crosswind, like we had. So this is one scenario where a wind prone packraft would be a bit too slow for enjoyment, given the other opportunities in the area.

Swans, but not the king’s swans.