No direction home

It was at a convention around 20 years ago that my comedy husband - Steve O’Brien - and I realized that primarily the only reason we went to conventions was to meet up with each other and a group of friends. So we thought we’d arrange our own get togethers at locations with a particular nerdy relevance. It took us 10+ plus to get our shit together to sort it out cause we’re rubbish, but now it’s become one of the highlights of our year!

Earlier on this month Steve ‘TriffidBoy’, Will ‘Two Chairs’ Salmon, Simon ‘Biscuits’ Colenutt, Paul ‘Captain K’ Kirkley and Sian ‘Ramakin’ Floyd met up in Dorest, we missed the other member of our Merry Pranksters Miles ‘MilesBot’ Hamer, he had compelling reasons for not being there, but we kept looking around for him. It being the location for a load of Doctor Who filming.

I got pretty plastered on the Friday night because of the sheer joy of being with this bunch of idiots. The hot tub in the Airbnb did help soothe the hangover the next day, and we bimbled over to Winspit Quarry where some of ‘Destiny of the Daleks’ (1979 below par Doctor Who) which we’d been told was closed, but we thought we’d have a punt, and boy was it worth it. After a trek we got to the spot, and there were people wandering around and even climbing. Skaro doesn’t really do it justice on screen, it’s lush, but does look bigger on screen, and I didn’t realize that it was costal, just yards from where they filmed there’s the sea! Speaking of the TARDIS we got to stand in cave where it landed! The eight year old me would have been delighted - hell - the current me was delighted!

After Skaro we stopped for a pint and a pasty, we tried to find the other quarry that Destiny was filmed in, with no luck, then off to Athelhampton Hall where ‘Seeds of Doom was filmed (1976 a banging 4th Doctor and Sarah adventure which rips off ‘The Thing’ and ‘Quatermass’) and this is one of the delights of these weekends, it takes me to sites I would never visited otherwise. Athelhampton Hall was steeped in history, the gardens were stunning nd more importantly Doctor Who was filmed there.

The next location was the church for ‘The Awakening’ (a middling Peter Davison two parter) but we discovered that only one brief scene was filmed there! Biscuits (aka Simon) was incandescent with rage! After a pint we visited Poundbury, nothing to do with Doctor Who, but a highly weird model town, the big idea of Chuck the Lizard King, it was very Stepford Wives.

The next day we traveled down to Lulworth Cove location for ‘The Curse of Fenric’ (a better than it has any right to be Sylvester McCoy story from near the end of the ‘classic’ series). Lulworth Cove was very much the jewel in the crown of the weekend. It was simply breathtaking, and we had the weather, just wish I’d had a swim. Captain K and I managed to shimmy over to Maidens Point, which wasn’t straight forward. We then headed up to Durdle Door where The Doctor regenerated in ‘Power of the Doctor’ (disappointing mess) . We had a late pub lunch and went our separate ways.

It was the best of times with the best of people