Dorset Place Names

Pic by Stephen McKay

In my last post I mentioned keeping my hubby company during sixteen hours of driving. He had to collect a machine and deliver it to Bridlington which is on the coast of Yorkshire and north of the Humber Bridge. It shouldn't have taken that long only something went wrong with the van he was driving and he had to keep the speed down.

We left home at 7.30 am and returned shortly after 11 pm so it was a very long day and ended up being something of an endurance test. We couldn't stop anywhere for the night because I had deadlines to meet and needed to start work early the next day.

There were some compensations and one of them was driving over the Humber Bridge which I wrote about here. When we left in the morning, I enjoyed my high seat in the van and being able to see so much more than when I'm lower down in my car. One of the fields I pass every day at that time was full of rabbits playing and hopping around. I'd never seen that before because the hedge is too high.

We drove west across the south of Dorset to our pick up point and I thought you might be interested in some of the place names we passed by. Tolpuddle is famous for its martyrs who, in 1834, were convicted under the Mutiny Act for forming the equivalent of an agricultural trade union to try and get a fairer work deal for themselves and their families. They were sentenced to seven years in the penal colonies of Australia and Tasmania. The Museum of the Tolpuddle Martyrs has been set up in the village to tell the story to visitors.

There are other 'puddles' in Dorset and our drive took us past turnings to Turners Puddle, Briants Puddle and Alfpuddle before we arrived at Puddletown where we turned off to the 'piddles' - Piddlehinton before Piddletrenthide. All of them follow the valley of the River Piddle. And one of the local breweries produces a beer called Piddle: a few weeks ago my friends and I were drinking pints of Piddle.

I hope the humour in all this is not lost on you. If you are English, it won't be.