Walk · North Yorkshire

Kimmeridge Bay and Clavell Tower

Kimmeridge
Kimmeridge Lower Stonehips Kimmeridge Coppice D Plantation N 440 YD © OpenStreetMap contributors
4.2MILES
2h 15mON FOOT
190mCLIMB
CircularSHAPE
The route A-road B-road Lane Track Path Water Woodland
Off-road 84% 16% shares tarmac with cars
Field & moor path 58%Lane & track 26%Road with traffic 16%

Our drawing of the route, over road and path data from OpenStreetMap. It shows where the walk goes and what it goes through. It is not a survey and not a navigation aid — carry OS Explorer on the hill.

Starts at
Smedmore Estate car park above Gaulter Gap, Kimmeridge
Parking
Private toll car park, fee per car collected at the kiosk in season, roughly 100 spaces; the village has no parking and the approach is a narrow toll road
Directions to the start →

A 4.2-mile loop of two and a quarter hours from the village down to the black shale ledges of Kimmeridge Bay, up to the Georgian folly of Clavell Tower and along the cliff before returning by field paths. Grass and stone tracks with 190 metres of climb, and rock pools at low tide that are the best in Dorset. Park at the Smedmore Estate toll car park above Gaulter Gap, which charges a fee per car at a manned kiosk in season and has room for perhaps a hundred; the village lanes are unsuitable. The bay is a marine nature reserve where dogs must stay off the fossil ledges when seals are hauled out, the low cliff edges are soft shale that crumbles, and the Clavell Tower field is grazed.

THE SMALL PRINTKimmeridge Bay is a marine nature reserve: dogs should be under close control on the ledges and away from hauled-out seals and rock-pooling groups. Cattle graze the Clavell Tower and clifftop fields, and the shale cliff edges crumble without warning.

House rules, decoded

Off-lead OK
Livestock — leads on
REGION · NORTH YORKSHIRE
GRID · 50.6183, -2.1338
SOURCE · HTTPS://WWW.DORSETWILDLIFETRUST.ORG.UK/DOGS
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