Dorset Gardens & Manor Houses

Gracious gardens, stately mansions, dramatic cliffs and a coastal town immortalized by Jane Austen in Persuasion – it’s all very recent history in Dorset. Dinosaurs roamed its coastline where unique rock formations span 180 million years of the earth’s history. The Wayfarers literally walk through time, accompanied by a scientist who explains the mysteries behind the fossils found along the shoreline. One relic of the Jurassic period is the jaws of an Ichthyosaur, a giant marine reptile that predates the dinosaurs. Wayfarers are welcome in country villages and 16th-century mansions and in the extraordinary gardens that flourish in Dorset’s countryside. We take Afternoon Tea at Ryall Farm, the original home of The Wayfarers, where Michael West and Christopher Hague first envisioned this unique way of walking 24 years ago.

Visit the homes of the Lord Digby and the Earl of Sandwich Explore wonderful gardens – grand and public, intimate and private Hunt for fossils with an expert on the Jurassic Coast Lunch in Lyme Regis, home to the French Lieutenant’s Woman