In Dorset Crime book 1, The Corfe Castle Murders, Lesley and Dennis have to make the walk up from Corfe Castle up to the top of Rollington Hill, something Lesley isn’t all that pleased about as she’s wearing the wrong shoes.

What Lesley doesn’t appreciate are the fabulous views from the top (although in The Corfe Castle Murders I ruin that view with a dead body, forensic tents and a whole team of investigators. Sorry!)

But I loved that stretch of hills so much, I decided to include them in the second Dorset Crime book, The Clifftop Murders, too.

If you get a chance to take that walk, I strongly recommend continuing along the Purbeck Way towards Swanage. If you think you’ve already seen the best of the views, you’re very much mistaken.

The Purbeck Way is a fifteen-mile walk from Wareham to Studland, which joins the Purbeck Ridge at Corfe. And the Purbeck Ridge is a line of limestone-topped hills, also stretching fifteen miles, from Worbarrow Bay in the west (which we’ll encounter later in this book) to Swanage in the east.

As you walk towards Swanage, it becomes apparent that the limestone continues as far as the Isle of Wight. If you could keep walking, maybe jumping (or being pushed, if you have the misfortune to be a character in one of my books) from the clifftop at Old Harry Rocks, donning diving gear to stroll along the seabed, and emerging twenty miles further along that strip of limestone, you’d find yourself at the Needles, the Isle of Wight’s closest point to Dorset.

The walk towards Old Harry Rocks is a beautiful one. It’s a gentle uphill walk, the ground rising as you approach the sea, and if you can’t face those few extra miles, there are plenty of points where you can peel off and head towards Swanage. And despite the number of people who walk that route, there’s plenty of space and plenty of wildlife. When I walked the path in May 2021, I sat down to take in the surroundings and spotted a skylark racing into the sky just a few metres away. And in spring when you walk across Ballard Down, you can hear them all around you, nesting in the scrubby grass. (Tip: keep your dog on a lead!)

On a clear day, the Needles are easily visible from Purbeck. I have memories of looking across the sea at them from the beach at Swanage. If you get the right angle, you can even get a photo of them in the distance, with Old Harry Rocks in the foreground. Sadly, the rocks are eroding fast and there aren’t as many of them as there were when I was a child. The main pillar is Old Harry, then there’s Old Harry’s Wife, sadly without a name of her own, a little further out to sea, and other smaller stacks that are constantly eroding and changing shape.

The view of the rocks, and my attempts to capture it on camera during an excursion to Studland thirteen years ago, inspired the opening scene of The Clifftop Murders.

My children were very young, and I’d decided I needed a weekend to myself in the countryside. So I made for the Isle of Purbeck. Foolishly, I’d chosen to camp – and to carry my tent on my back. The less said about that, the better!

On the second day, I was determined to get a photo of Old Harry Rocks. So I left Swanage on the bus, where I was staying at the youth hostel (it was pouring with rain, and I’d given up on the tiny, leaky tent) and headed up the coast. The rain was easing off, and I thought I’d get lucky.

No such luck. As I climbed down from the bus, the heavens opened. The trickle of people heading along the path from the clifftop to the road became a stream – everyone else was doing the sensible thing, and leaving.

But my next bus wasn’t for an hour. And as I approached the clifftops, I spotted the sun shining over Bournemouth in the distance.

If the sun was shining there, then surely the gap in the clouds would move south, and soon be over my head. And that would mean a rainbow.

So I sat down. I picked the driest spot I could find, spread my coat around me (without taking it off, I wasn’t that daft), and waited. For an hour.

Finally the rainbow arrived, and I got my photographs.

By the time I’d finished, the sun was shining and I decided to take the coastal path back into Swanage.

I love that stretch of the coastal path. The first time I took it, I was small enough to be riding on my dad’s shoulders, with various family members walking alongside us – my uncle and cousins, if I remember rightly. It’s a relatively easy walk from Swanage to Studland, and there are good pubs at both ends and a bus route linking the two. What’s not to like?

So when I was looking for a location for the second book in the series, The Clifftop Murders, Ballard Down, Old Harry Rocks, and my day waiting for a rainbow came to mind. Ameena Khan, who sadly comes to a sticky end right at the beginning of the book, is a keen amateur photographer, like me. But instead of waiting for a rainbow, she’s waiting for the dawn. The cliffs in that spot face almost due east, so she’ll get a stunning shot of the sun rising over the sea.

Or she would do, if somebody didn’t push her off the cliff…