On Foot

Directions Start: SY 447910 The walk starts at Eype’s Mouth Car Park at the end of Mount Lane. 1 From the car park, as you look at the sea (or west), head right, uphill and past the small holiday cottage on the cliff edge. Follow the coast path with sea views to your left and views to your right across

Eype village and chapel. After the cottage, go through a kissing gate with a National Trust sign for Downhouse Farm and Thorncombe Beacon ¾ mile, which looms ahead. You’ll now see an impressive Bronze Age burial mound on the skyline to the right of the beacon, in an imposing position.

Keep ahead. Look out for thrift and other wild flowers along the path, with views back towards the

Isle of Portland. Swallows skim the meadows here. After approx. ¼ mile there is another kissing gate with a National Trust sign. Go through the gate then slight right onto a narrow sheep track across the middle of the field and away from the coast path. Keep on this track, curving around the edge of a bowl-shaped field to your left which now opens out beneath the beacon. You may hear stonechats along this part of the walk. Continue towards the burial mound in front of you. Just before you reach it, you will see a stile on your right to continue the walk but first it is worth visiting the mound and then onto the beacon for fabulous views towards Golden Cap which, at 191 metres (627 feet) is the highest point on the south coast. Thorncombe Beacon was the site of one of many beacons built in 1588 to warn of the Spanish Armada.

2 Retrace your steps back to the burial mound and then the stile (signed to Eype Down and Frogmore

Farm) which is now on your left to continue the walk. From here there are also good views inland towards Colmers Hill. Go over the stile, keep the hedge and fence on your right then follow another sheep track along the field edge. Tremendous views continue all around with Seatown down to your left and Chideock behind. Keep walking towards a wood as the field funnels into a corner with a kissing gate. Go through this and then keep right at a fork, along the fence through a wood filled with sycamore. The path meanders downhill alongside the fence; look out for treecreepers at this point.

After a short while, you meet another path; turn left then right onto another path, then left down

towards the farm and Downhouse Farm café. 3 Go past the farm on your right and some houses on your left and you will then come to a stile on your right. Climb this to enter a field, with

Eype village and chapel ahead. Cross this field, heading to your right and also to the right of a hedge protruding into the field, then go through a gate into another field, heading for the far corner towards the sea. Go through this gate, past a sign for Eype, then head slight left towards some houses and a wooden gate and stile. Just before the stile, cross a small wooden footbridge over a stream. After the stile, you find yourself on a track lined with some holiday cottages which soon meets the road. Turn right and head back towards the car park and the sea… for a swim!