If the road is taken into Portland the village of Rodwell, at which there is a station, is at the parting of the ways, that to the left leading to the shore at Sandsfoot Castle, one of Henry’s block houses that played a part in the Civil War.  It is not a particularly picturesque ruin, though its purchase by the Weymouth corporation will prevent any more of the wanton damage it has suffered in the past.  The other route goes direct to Wyke Regis, upon the hill above East Fleet and the Chesil Bank.  Wyke is the mother church of Weymouth and is a fine Perpendicular structure in a magnificent position.  Its list of rectors starts in 1302, so that the church must be on the site of an earlier building.  The churchyard is the resting place of a large number of shipwrecked sailors who have met their death in the dread “Deadman’s Bay,” as this end of the great West Bay is termed.

The road into Portland is across a bridge built in 1839, the first to connect the island-peninsula with the mainland.  Then follows a long two miles of monotony along the eastern end of Chesil Beach, and the most ardent pedestrian will prefer to take to the railway at least as far as Portland station if not to the terminus at Easton.  The lonely stretch of West Bay, in sharp contrast to the animation of the Roads, cannot be seen unless the high bank of shingle on the right is ascended.  Portland Castle is on the nearest point of the island to the mainland.  This also was built by Henry VIII and is in good repair and inhabited by one of the officers of the garrison.

The road ascends to Fortune’s Well, as uninteresting a “capital” as could well be imagined and for the sheer ugliness of its buildings and church probably unsurpassed.  Its only claim to notice is the extraordinary way in which its houses are built on the hillside, one row of doorsteps and diminutive gardens being on a level with the next row of roofs, so steep is the lie of the land.  Above the village is the great Verne Fort occupying fifty acres on the highest point of the island and commanding all the approaches to the Roads.

[Illustration:  ON THE WAY TO CHURCH OPE.]

The route now bears right and soon reaches a high and desolate plateau littered with the debris of many years quarrying.  The only saving grace in the scenery is the magnificent rearward view along the vast and slightly curving Chesil Bank which stretches away to Abbotsbury and the highlands of the beautiful West Dorset coast.  The prison is still farther ahead to the left.  There would be fewer visitors to Portland were it not for a morbid desire to see the convicts.  Parties are often made up to arrive in time to watch the men as they leave the quarries in the late afternoon.  Soldiers and warders mount guard along the walls and the depressing sight should be shunned as much for one’s own sake as for that of the prisoners.  Good taste, however, is a virtue that usually has to give way before curiosity.