One of Dorset's best walking routes comes with an unusual twist: you can start it by boat. A water taxi — actually a rigid inflatable boat — runs in summer from West Bay to Lyme Regis, letting walkers travel the 10-mile return journey on foot with the sea at their side the whole way, rather than doubling back on a circular route.
The boat ride is more than transport. Skippers point out the shoreline's layered history: Chesil Beach stretching towards Portland, Start Point visible on the Devon horizon, and a seabed scattered with wrecks, from smugglers' ships to vessels lost in both world wars. Lyme Bay's waters have a sombre side, too — the battleship HMS Formidable was torpedoed here on New Year's Day 1915 with heavy loss of life, and the 1944 Exercise Tiger rehearsal for D-day, attacked by German boats, left hundreds of American dead. Those wreck sites are now designated war graves.
Lyme Regis itself is worth lingering in before setting off. The Cobb, the curving harbour wall, features in Jane Austen's Persuasion and John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman — the film adaptation famously opened with Meryl Streep sweeping along it in a hooded cloak.
The walk back to West Bay doesn't hug the shore at first, because the cliffs here simply won't let it. This is some of the most unstable coastline in England, and the path diverts inland — through a golf course on the way to Charmouth — wherever the ground has given way. The geology is the point, though: this is Mary Anning country, and a woodland sculpture on the route shows her holding aloft an Ichthyosaurus anningae, the fossil she discovered. Charmouth itself is a small, harbourless village popular with paddleboarders.
From there, the South West Coast Path climbs steadily, overlapping with the Monarch's Way — Charles II's escape route after the civil war. The rewards come at Golden Cap, at 191 metres the highest point on the south coast, with wide views over Lyme Bay. The Anchor Inn at Seatown makes a natural pit stop, and the descent continues past Eype, whose village church PJ Harvey used to record her Mercury-winning album Let England Shake.
The final stretch to West Bay keeps its warnings visible — signage marks a 2020 cliff fall, and diversions are common. West Bay itself, once called Bridport Harbour before a railway company rebranded it for tourists, still has its old station, now a restaurant set in railway carriages, plus chip stalls and views back towards Lyme.
Who's it for? Anyone who likes their walks with a story attached — this one stacks up naval history, fossil hunting, literary landmarks and a royal escape route into a single day. Bring proper footwear, check path conditions before you go, and note that the water taxi only runs in summer; a year-round bus connects the two towns if you'd rather skip the boat. OS Explorer 116 (Lyme Regis & Bridport) covers the whole route.
