Geograph - photograph every grid square

The South Dorset Ridgeway is part of the South West Coast Path National Trail and was the original route to be designated (the longer coastal route around Portland was only added in 2003). Providing an inland option or a circular route if combined with the coast, it runs 18 miles from West Bexington to Osmington Mills, decreasing the total distance from the coastal option of the South West Coast Path by 25 miles. Although it is some distance from the sea, it offers views of the Jurassic Coast.
The route also provides the opportunity to explore one of the UK’s most significant ancient ceremonial landscapes. The South Dorset Ridgeway has been important to local people for millennia as shown by the extraordinary number of lumps and bumps - or historic monuments - that can still be seen along the ridge. From long and bank barrows constructed around 6,000 years ago in the Neolithic period, stone circles and 4,000 year old Bronze Age round barrows, to Iron Age hillforts.