Five kilometres south of Weymouth, joined to the mainland by an eighteen-mile bank of shingle, is a limestone island four miles long and rising to 150 metres, which does not look, sound or feel like anywhere else in England.
Portland is a place of quarries, cliffs, an enormous artificial harbour, a prison, a lighthouse and a tidal race that has been wrecking ships for a thousand years. Thomas Hardy called it the Isle of Slingers. It is the best half-day out from Weymouth and almost none of it costs anything.
The connection between the island and the mainland is itself remarkable. Chesil Beach is a shingle barrier eighteen miles long, running north-west from Portland to West Bay, standing up to fifteen metres high and enclosing a shallow lagoon — the Fleet — behind it for much of its length.
Its most-repeated feature is the grading of the pebbles: they run from fist-sized at the Portland end to pea-sized at Bridport, sorted by the sea over thousands of years, and the tradition is that local fishermen landing in fog could tell where they were by the size of the stones under their feet.
The Fleet behind it is the largest tidal lagoon in Britain and internationally important for wildfowl — it is where the Abbotsbury Swannery sits, the only managed colony of nesting mute swans in the world.
A serious warning. Chesil’s seaward face shelves very steeply and the undertow is powerful. People drown here. It is a beach for walking on, not for swimming from.
There is a visitor centre at Ferrybridge, where the causeway crosses to the island.
The southern tip, and the reason most people come. A red and white lighthouse of 1906 — open for tours — stands on a low limestone platform with the old lighthouses nearby, Pulpit Rock at the water’s edge, and beyond it the sea doing something extraordinary.
The Portland Race is a tidal race off the Bill where currents from either side of the island meet, and on a spring tide it is a visible field of standing, breaking water extending several kilometres out. It has been one of the most dangerous stretches of water on the English coast since ships have used it, and watching it from the shore in a big tide is genuinely unsettling.
There is a car park, a café and a lot of open ground.
Portland’s whole economy was stone. Portland stone — a fine white limestone that weathers well — was used for St Paul’s Cathedral, much of Georgian and Victorian London, the Cenotaph, the United Nations headquarters and the headstones of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is why the island is riddled with quarries.
Tout Quarry, above Fortuneswell, is a disused quarry turned into a sculpture park and nature reserve: dozens of works carved directly into the rock faces and the spoil, scattered through a maze of stone. It is free, it is unlike anything else in Britain, and it is best on a grey day. There is a Portland Sculpture and Quarry Trust running carving courses there.
Kingbarrow and the other quarries on the island have become nature reserves, with limestone grassland flora and butterflies.
Portland Harbour is one of the largest artificial harbours in the world, enclosed by breakwaters built by convict labour from the 1840s. It was a Royal Navy base for well over a century and it was one of the principal embarkation points for the D-Day landings in 1944 — the Castletown D-Day Centre covers that story.
Portland Castle, at Castletown, is one of Henry VIII’s artillery forts, built between 1539 and 1541 in the King’s Device programme against French and Spanish invasion. It is one of the best preserved of the whole chain, with a Tudor gun room, a great hall and a garden overlooking the water. English Heritage. See our Portland Castle page.
The harbour is now the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, which hosted the 2012 Olympic sailing regatta.
The island’s villages — Fortuneswell and Castletown at the northern end under the cliff, Easton, Weston and Southwell on the plateau above — are built almost entirely of the local stone and have a distinct character. The Grove holds the prison, which has been on the island since 1848.
Church Ope Cove on the eastern side is a pebble beach reached down steps, with Rufus Castle above it and a ruined medieval church in the trees.
The South West Coast Path runs right round the island — about thirteen kilometres — with high cliffs on the west, quarries and coves on the east, and the Bill at the bottom. It is one of the best days on the Jurassic Coast.
Getting there. The 501 open-top bus runs from Weymouth to Portland Bill in season and is one of the better bus rides in England. By car it is fifteen minutes over the causeway. On foot, the Rodwell Trail from Weymouth reaches Ferrybridge.
Weather. Portland is exposed on every side and considerably windier than Weymouth. It is also the sunniest part of Dorset.
Parking at the Bill, Tout Quarry and Church Ope is charged or limited.
Quarries are open ground with unfenced edges and old workings. Stay on the paths and keep children close.
Fossils. The island’s stone is Jurassic and full of them, including the fossil forest at the eastern end near the range — though collecting is restricted in places.
Portland and the Fleet are among the best wildlife sites on the south coast.
Portland Bill Bird Observatory has been recording migration since 1961 and the Bill is one of the premier migration watch points in Britain — in spring and autumn, rarities turn up here that appear nowhere else in the county.
The Fleet behind Chesil holds internationally important numbers of wildfowl and waders in winter, and the Abbotsbury Swannery at its western end is the only managed colony of nesting mute swans in the world, with several hundred birds.
Portland’s quarries have become limestone grassland reserves, with rare butterflies including the silver-studded blue.
And offshore, dolphins, porpoises and, occasionally, basking sharks pass the Bill in summer.
Worth knowing, because it explains the island’s shape. Portland stone is a fine, pale, oolitic limestone that carves well and weathers to a bright white, and it has been quarried here since Roman times.
The trade became national when Inigo Jones used it for the Banqueting House in Whitehall in 1619, and enormous when Christopher Wren chose it for St Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire — around six million tons are estimated to have left the island since.
It went on to build much of Georgian and Victorian London, the Cenotaph, the United Nations headquarters in New York, and the headstones of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is why the same white stone marks British war graves on four continents.
The island you walk on is what is left after all of that: a plateau of worked-out quarries, spoil, tramway beds and cliffs, now largely returned to limestone grassland and butterflies.
Technically a tied island — it is joined to the mainland by Chesil Beach and a causeway, so you can drive there.
A tidal race off Portland Bill where currents from both sides of the island meet, producing standing broken water for several kilometres offshore. It is among the most dangerous waters on the English coast.
No. The seaward face shelves steeply and the undertow is dangerous. Swim in Weymouth Bay.
A disused quarry above Fortuneswell turned into a free sculpture park, with works carved directly into the rock. It is one of the most unusual places in Dorset.
The 501 open-top bus from Weymouth to Portland Bill in season, or the Rodwell Trail on foot as far as Ferrybridge.