Coking Farm Fishery Caravan and Campsite

Once you’ve finished checking out all the other fishing in the area – there’s quite a bit – this part of Dorset is sublime for scenery and walks. Ascending out of Blackmoor Vale, the setting for the start of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, is the Woodland Trust-managed Duncliffe Wood, or you could drive for about an hour to get to the pristine World Heritage Site of the Jurassic Coast for cliff walks, beaches and yet more fishing. If you’re a two-wheeler type, a mighty challenge is to bike up Gold Hill in nearby Shaftesbury, which the tired-legged Hovis boy pushed his bike up in the TV ad; Shaftesbury is one of the highest towns in the country, as he could no doubt tell you, and overlooks Blackmore Vale for whimsical painting of the parts you hiked the day before. There are several other historic Dorset towns and villages nearby: Sherborne with its Walter Raleigh-built castle and medieval buildings; Cerne Abbas with a giant naked man on its hillside and Stalbridge, where Douglas Adams wrote most of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Keeping up the Dorset literary theme, a visit to the county town of Dorchester is a must for more Thomas Hardy connections: his home in town is now managed by the National Trust and Dorchester and the surrounding area was the inspiration for much of his work. Several museums are in town too: if this all sounds a bit too grown-up, the Dinosaur Museum and the Dorset Teddy Bear Museum should regress you to childhood nicely.