Close Attractions

Swanage Pier is a Victorian pier which extends into the southern end of Swanage Bay near the town of Swanage, in the south-east of Dorset. It was built in 1895 for passenger ship services. It is situated on the eastern coast of the Isle of Purbeck, approximately 6 ¹⁄? miles south of Poole and 25 miles east of Dorchester in the United Kingdom. An older pier, opened 1860, was used by local quarries to ship stone, but it fell into decline with only its timber piles remaining today.

The Swanage Railway is a railway branch line from near Wareham, Dorset to Swanage, Dorset, England, opened in 1885 and now operated as a heritage railway. The independent company which built it was amalgamated with the larger London and South Western Railway in 1886. The passenger service was withdrawn in 1972, leaving a residual freight service over part of the line handling mineral traffic. After the passenger closure, a heritage railway group revived part of the line; it too used the name Swanage Railway and now operates a 9.5-mile line which follows the route of the former line from Wareham to Swanage with stops at Norden, Corfe Castle, Harman's Cross and Herston Halt.

Durlston Country Park is a 320-acre country park and nature reserve stretching along the coast of the Isle of Purbeck at Durlston near Swanage in Dorset, England. The Park, which is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, has been owned by Dorset County Council since the early 1970s and is mostly open access The Lighthouse at Anvil Point is built of local stone and was completed in 1881.

Durlston Castle stands within Durlston Country Park, a 1.13 square-kilometre country park and nature reserve stretching along the coastline south of Swanage, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.

Ballard Down is an area of chalk downland on the Purbeck Hills in the English county of Dorset. The hills meet the English Channel here, and Ballard Down forms a headland, Ballard Point, between Studland Bay to the north and Swanage Bay to the south. The chalk here forms part of a system of chalk downlands in southern England, and once formed a continuous ridge between what is now west Dorset and the present day Isle of Wight. Old Harry Rocks, just offshore from the dip slope of the down, and The Needles on the westernmost tip of the Isle of Wight, are remnants of this ridge.