Dorset Visitor Guide

This is the landscape that novelist Thomas Hardy used time and again as a backdrop for his tales of love and tragedy. Visit a village inn and it’s easy to imagine florid farmers and caddish aristocrats flirting with doomed maidens in their low-ceilinged, flagstone-floored bar rooms. Today Hardy’s cottage birthplace and sophisticated Victorian town house of his own design are run by the National Trust. Pick up or download a Hardy Trail leaflet to discover Hardy’s Wessex for yourself. H ARD Y C OUNTR Y Hardy’s Cottage Fleet Lagoon Location, Location ! Colmer’s Hill, Bridport DORCHESTER - OUR COUNTY TOWN Hardy’s Casterbridge has had a makeover! Brewery Square, a vibrant new quarter brings a Covent Garden feel to Dorset’s county town. Now a popular shopping and leisure destination which has inspired chef-led restaurants, cafés, bars, brasseries, bistros and a cinema to move in. It is all a far cry from Dorchester’s horrible histories, the notorious ‘hanging’ Judge Jeffreys and deportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Prince Charles’ Poundbury cannot fail to impress. Wander its stunning architecture and you could be forgiven for thinking you have walked right on to a living film set.