Portland Blowhole and Waterfall

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Portland's Blowhole and Waterfall

Portland, Dorset

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The above image is copyright Dorset County Council 2000 and is reproduced here with permission.

This rough coastal area includes a small quarry which beautifully illustrates the technique of 'backfilling' where the waste material is piled up behind the workers at the quarry face. This results in a trench advancing across the landscape.

Uniquely, there is a blowhole where it is possible to look down through an iron grill into a cave and see the waves surging far below.

As if these wonders are not enough, Portland's only waterfall - fed by Portland's only free running stream - tips itself over a high cliff.

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CAVE HOLE

Cave Hole is a huge cave with a blow hole at the top.

The cave takes a battering.

How many more waves like this will it take to undermine the cave roof to the point where it all comes crashing down?

An old wooden hand-driven crane is in the background.

PORTLAND'S STREAM AND WATERFALL

Portland's only open stream rises at Culverwell. This is seen at left in 1990 and at right in 2007.
The stream from Culverwell runs through this channel eroded into the limestone, under the footbridge and out over the cliff edge to form Portland's waterfall, see below.

The stream runs in a gully to the eastern cliff edge.

It usually only flows in the winter months - in summer the gully is dry.

This waterfall marks the end of Portland's only surviving stream.

Many others used to run free but are now culverted.

One of Portland's most interesting natural features is the blowhole about one kilometre along the eastern coastline from The Bill. The roof of a large cave has broken through to the surface and lies in a hollow. Visitors are protected by steel bars and it has been possible to stand on this rusting grating and watch the waves pounding into the cave far below.

Once, during a storm, I stood here when a huge wave pounded into the cave below and a jet of water came roaring out of the hole like a liquid volcano - drenching me to the skin.

Then, in the late 1980s, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, in its infinite wisdom, decided to block off the hole with heavy stone slabs as shown because it was feared that the blow hole was dangerous.

In fact, the huge weight of the slabs greatly increased the risk of the cave roof collapsing and people were more tempted to stand on the stones than they would have been to stand on the rusty iron grating!

A storm in January 1990 caused massive waves to roar into the cave and up the blowhole.

The waves lifted the slabs - each weighing about 2 tonnes - and dropped them, smashing them as shown; an awesome demonstration of the power of the sea.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that the rusty iron grating is still intact despite the efforts of the Council to destroy it and ruin this feature for visitors.

Here we see stones in January 2004.

They had been replaced after being smashed in 1990 but have yet again been broken and tossed around.

This all goes to demonstrate the futility of the Council trying to stop the public looking down into this hole.

The latest arrangement (2007) is that a second set of new bars have been put in place and heavy stones have been moved back on the edge of the grid.

This now allows visitors to look down into the blow hole in relative safety.

In the current climate of Health and Safety madness, I expect the hole to be concreted over, a two metre high steel fence to be erected and this all be topped with razor wire just in case anyone should become dizzy looking through the grating, fall and hit their head on the ground; thereby creating a huge compensation claim.

In 1972 I published a guide book for people who couldn't be bothered to walk more than one hundred yards from their car.

For the cover I drove my Morris 1300 precariously to the crane near Culverwell and took this picture.

I sold 7,000 copies and made £38 profit - hardly a fortune even in 1972!

The cover price was 25 pence of which I got one penny whilst W H Smith got 10 pence on a 'sale or return' basis for displaying it and the publisher took the rest.

I decided at that point that being a writer was a mug's game and that being a bookseller was the career to follow.

Instead - I became a scientist...

In 2007 a copy of this guidebook was advertised for sale on a German rare books website for 140 Euros! I wished I had kept back a lot of copies.

LOCAL QUARRYING ACTIVITY

This man-made 'cave' exists on this stretch of coastline.

It is not too difficult to reach with care - from a point near the sawmill remains.

It goes about 10 metres (30 feet) back from the entrance.

The typical remains of a tramway track where trucks loaded with stone waste were hauled by horses or ancient steam locomotives to the cliff edge and then emptied to create the scree slopes that are so numerous around Portland's coastline.

The remains of iron spikes exist in these stone sleepers showing how the rails were fixed.

The remains of a demolished stone sawmill which is bisected by the eastern coastal footpath.

The man-made 'cave' is close to this point just below the level of the cliff edge.

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