Durdle Door, located at Jurassic Coast, is popular among tourists and locals. — Photos: Pexels
The author Bill Bryson was right. One morning in Dorset, England I opened the curtains at my hotel and took in the verdant landscape leading down to the coast.
“For miles around, the Dorset hills rolled and billowed like a shaken-out quilt settling onto a bed ... in the distance, the sea, bright and vast and silvery blue, it was beautiful beyond words.”
Bryson wrote those words some 30 years ago in his beloved travelogue, Notes From A Small Island. They still felt true, even in chilly December.
I was peering out of my window in the Louma Country Hotel, a new property on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast with 17 rooms dotted around a main farmhouse, cosy stone barns, converted stable blocks and timber cabins. Driving to Louma from my London flat took three and a half hours, about twice as long as it takes to get to my usual haunts in the Cotswolds.
I love the Cotswolds. The problem is, so does everyone else. During peak times, it’s overcrowded with Americans trying to live out their fantasies from Nancy Meyers’ The Holiday. Tour buses jam up tiny country lanes so often, there’s talk of banning them altogether.
The ruins of Corfe Castle in Dorset is one of the many attractions in the area.
Locals grumble about high-profile Americans, from J.D. Vance to Ellen DeGeneres directing the world’s attention to their small towns.
And visitor numbers are rising: Both the number of short-term rentals and occupancy in the Cotswolds rose in 2025, with the latter up 4.4%, according to data the analytics platform AirDNA shared with Bloomberg.
Compared with bustling, land-locked Costwolds villages like Bourton-on-the-Water, the seaside towns of Dorset feel undiscovered by foreign tourists. (Occupancy in short-term rentals in Dorset rose just 1.1% in 2025, while the numbers of listings decreased by 1% in the same period, according to AirDNA.)
It takes time
There’s no Dorset equivalent of the Cotswolds’ Estelle Manor, an uber-glamorous members club and hotel, whose visitors sometimes arrive by helicopter. Dorset is harder to reach and less flashy. That’s its charm – it has all the history, heritage and countryside views, but fewer crowds.
That’s partly because it’s one of the few English counties without a motorway. Our little Volkswagen Polo had to navigate winding stretches of single-lane country roads in a winter storm to get there.
But Tom Marchant, co-founder of luxury travel outfit Black Tomato, says he’s seeing more curiosity from Americans about England’s south coast. “It is quieter than the Cotswolds, a little less polished in the best possible way, but genuinely stunning and right on the water,” Marchant says.
“You still get great pubs and deep history, but with cliffs, beaches and sea air.”
Dorset's Jurassic Coast is the only natural Unesco World Heritage Site in England.
Dorset and neighbouring East Devon are perhaps best known for the Jurassic Coast, a 153km seaside stretch that tells the story of 185 million years of Earth’s natural history. Its rocky outcrops and fossils date back to the time of the dinosaurs.
The Jurassic Coast, England’s only natural Unesco World Heritage Site, is home to the iconic Durdle Door, a rocky arch formed by waves eroding the limestone over the years. The name comes from the Old English word “thirl”, meaning to pierce, bore or drill.
Black Tomato’s Marchant says he spent childhood summers here fossil hunting on its ancient beaches. He brings his daughters now, and his company offers fossil-hunting tours with local experts.
You probably won’t find museum-worthy dinosaur remains, but many beachgoers take home bits of ancient ammonites, extinct cephalopods related to the octopus. While sunny days may feel more pleasant, storms bring better fossil-hunting.
But it’s not all crisp air and ancient rocks. Dorset is also known for its food. Louise Chidgey is the co-owner of Brassica, a beloved restaurant and design shop on the town square in Beaminster, 25 minutes from Louma. She moved to Dorset from London 11 years ago, wanting a change of pace. What she’s found is that you can go for miles on a walk without seeing any housing estates or new developments. Outside the peak summer months, it doesn’t get too busy. Her restaurant’s menu serves food bought only from farms and fishermen within 24km.
Rosalyn Wikeley, a writer in West Dorset, recommends the Parlour, a rural gem in Burton Bradstock that offers wood-fired pizzas in a rustic setting and hearty Sunday roasts on the site of a former milking parlour. Its address is just “Bredy Farm”, providing a potential adventure to anyone driving down on a GPS.
A bit Victorian
Dorset is Thomas Hardy country – the author’s heart is buried here – and tourists can stop by for a pint at the Acorn Inn, a 16th century institution in the small village of Evershot mentioned in Tess Of The D’Urbervilles. Expect oak beams, roaring fires, four-poster beds and a menu of fish and chips and other pub classics. You don’t have to love Victorian literature to enjoy the local pints, but guests who stay the night are likely to find a copy of Hardy’s book in their room.
There isn’t a surge of luxury hotel construction in Dorset the way there is in the Cotswolds, so Louma’s opening was significant to the region’s tourism scene. My stay was a delight, featuring what I’ve come to love from countryside retreats: wellies (Wellington boots) for walking, hearty English breakfasts, tours of the farm where I met a flock of friendly sheep, pasture-to-plate cuisine and miles of walking trails leading, in this case, to the coast.
Other well-loved lodging in the area includes the Pig On the Beach, which opened in 2014 in a Victorian manor perched above a sandy spot in Studland. Within a few months of opening, it won the Sunday Times Hotel of the Year Award. It beat ritzy hotels in London for the top prize with its shabby-chic rooms, friendly service and a seasonal menu influenced by its kitchen gardens.
Brassica’s Chidgey recommends Seaside Boarding House, a small boutique clubhouse on the cliffs from the former co-founders of the Groucho Club in London. As befits its social-scene owners, there’s a cocktail bar and a snug little library for quieter pursuits.
Louma owners Louis and Emma Steyn say there’s something about Dorset that encourages you to slow down and reconnect with nature, family or yourself. That’s what every great countryside retreat offers, but it’s getting harder to come by. While the Cotswolds has been called a billionaire’s playground, Dorset feels quieter internationally, especially in the off season, even if Brits have long loved it as a summer escape.
For now.
That’s the dilemma in promoting Dorset to readers. A surge in visitors could dispel some of the magic. But I suspect the lack of fast trains and the longer drive down from London are a natural obstacle to the overtourism happening elsewhere. I don’t expect to read headlines about Beyoncé buying a property or a US vice president taking their vacation here.
For those willing to put in the work, Dorset’s charms make it a fabulous alternative. The only other person I saw on one morning walk was a local with his Labrador. I left my rural weekend feeling restored. – SARAH RAPPAPORT/Bloomberg
