Abbotsbury

Hundreds of mute swans nest in reed beds behind the Chesil Bank, and the sound of six hundred pairs of wings lifting at once is a thing you hear with your whole body. Abbotsbury is a village of swans, subtropical gardens and a shingle bank that has been building itself for five thousand years.

The Abbotsbury Swannery, established by Benedictine monks in the fourteenth century, is the only managed colony of nesting mute swans in the world. The birds breed on the Fleet — the shallow lagoon sealed behind the Chesil Bank — and in the late-spring nesting season boardwalks thread the reed beds between sitting pairs, cygnets hatching at your feet. The monks' tithe barn, among the largest in England, still stands from the 1400s, and St Catherine's Chapel on its bare hill looks down the Chesil's eighteen graded miles toward Portland — local fishermen could famously tell their position on the bank by pebble size alone. A mile away, the subtropical gardens fill a sheltered combe with Himalayan, South African and New Zealand planting softened by the sea air.