Golden Cap

Feel the pull in your legs as the path tilts up, and up again, until suddenly there is nothing higher. You are standing on the summit of Golden Cap, one hundred and ninety-one metres above the waves, the highest point on the entire south coast of England. The land falls away on every side, the sea stretches out silver below, and the Jurassic Coast unrolls east and west as far as you can see.

The hill takes its name from what caps it. Below your feet the summit is crowned by a band of hard, tawny Upper Greensand, a golden-coloured rock that catches the light and can be seen far out to sea. For centuries sailors used that bright crest as a landmark, steering by the golden hill on the horizon. Beneath the greensand cap, though, the story changes: the lower slopes are soft Jurassic clays, and it is this mismatch that shapes everything here. The hard cap holds the summit up while the soft clays beneath slump and slide, so the seaward face is forever crumbling, shedding landslips down to the beaches at Charmouth and Seatown, and feeding those famous fossil shores that have been worked since Mary Anning's day. The whole hill, and a great sweep of coast and farmland around it, was gathered together by the National Trust as a memorial estate, kept open and undeveloped for everyone who climbs it.

Look first, then, at the view, because it is the reason you climbed. On a clear day you can see west past Lyme Regis into Devon, perhaps as far as Start Point, and east along Chesil Beach and the great shingle line towards Portland. Look second, close at hand, at the golden greensand of the summit itself, the very rock that names the hill. Look third at the summit heath and the farmland around it, where skylarks pour out their song overhead and stonechats perch on the gorse. Look fourth, seaward, at the raw crumbling cliff face dropping to the beaches below, and understand as you look that its instability is exactly what makes it golden and what makes it rich in fossils. And look fifth for the butterflies working the summit grassland in summer, and the seabirds riding the wind off the edge.

Here is the great fact to carry with you. There is no point on the whole south coast of England higher than the spot where you are standing. From the white cliffs of Kent to the red rocks of Devon, along all those hundreds of miles of coastline, this modest Dorset hill, capped in gold, stands tallest of them all. It is a hill, not a mountain, and the climb is honest rather than heroic, but the reward is out of all proportion to the effort: a whole coast laid at your feet, and beneath you a slow, patient collapse of clay and stone that has been carving this country of landslips and fossils for millions of years.

A word of care while you enjoy it. Those seaward cliffs are unstable and can give way without warning, so keep well back from the edge on the top, and equally well back from the foot of the cliffs if you walk the beaches below. Save some energy for the descent, which is as steep as the climb, and mind your footing on the loose ground.

From the summit the Coast Path drops down towards Seatown and its little cove, then presses on east through the fossil country towards Chesil Beach and Abbotsbury. Take one last, slow turn on the top and drink in the whole panorama, west into Devon, east towards Portland, sea and cliff and golden rock, from the highest point on England's south coast. Then, carefully, begin the long way down. Walk safe.