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Long known as Thomas Hardy country Dorset has everything from literary trails to Iron Age settlements, old-fashioned seaside resorts to beautiful Jurassic Coastline. Featuring a number of Blue Flag white sand beaches and ease of access from London, Dorset is popular in the UK for quick weekend trips to the sea.

But it is not just a county built around its coastline. Inland it also offers some quintessentially English landscapes, crossed by the chalk ranges of the South Dorset and North Dorset downs, agriculturally fertile valleys in Frome, Stour and the Vale of Blackmore and the famous marble quarries of Purbeck and Portland.

Inhabited since at least 8000BC Dorsets high chalk hills have offered defensive settlements for thousands of years and there are Neolithic and Bronze Age Settlements at almost every turn.

In addition there are numerous Iron Age Hill Forts, with Maiden Castle being the most famous and well worth a visit (it is the largest of its kind in Europe.) The elegant and charming town of Dorchester is built on endless Roman remains and artefacts and there are some excellent sites and museums there. Also worth seeing are the ruins of Corfe Castle and historic sites at Athelhampton and Cranborne Manor and Gardens, as well as Sherbourne Castle, home of Sir Walter Raleigh.

For those looking for something a bit more relaxing, Bournemouth has been dealing in laid back for over two hundred years now. The writer Augustus Granville included Bournemouth in his Book of Spas in 1841 and ever since tourists have been flocking there for the medicinal air, beautiful beaches, stunning gardens and temperate climate. Now a curious combination of art deco calm, bohemian cafes and numerous old peoples homes, it is certainly laid back!

For something less sedate, most people head out along the 95 miles of spectacular, untouched coastline, known as the Jurassic Coast for its incomparable selection of Jurassic, Triassic and Cretaceous fossils and now the UKs only natural UNESCO World Heritage site. For this coastline alone, Dorset is a must-see county.