Dorset

Many favour a circular walk, but you can give a linear one new shape with the addition of a novel form of transport. My wife Helen, our friend Tom Cox and I take the water taxi – a rigid inflatable boat (Rib) – from West Bay on Dorset’s coast to Lyme Regis, with a plan to walk back to our starting point.

The rain stops as the boat leaves the harbour, the views open along Chesil Beach to low-lying Portland to the east, and west to Lyme Regis; on the far horizon, we can see Start Point on the Devon coast. Our skipper, Nick, is highly knowledgable and takes time to stop and point out the history of the shoreline and the treacherous waters of Lyme Bay. The seabed is studded with wrecks – fishing boats and smugglers’ ships, but some are from the two world wars.

On New Year’s Day 1915, the battleship HMS Formidable was torpedoed by a German submarine. Of its crew of 750, no more than 200 survived. In the second world war, the Dorset coast was a huge mustering station for the allied forces in preparation for D-day. During Exercise Tiger, a large-scale rehearsal for the Normandy landings, hundreds of American service personnel were killed in an attack by German boats later known as the Battle of Lyme Bay – the wreck sites are now designated war graves.

At Lyme Regis, we disembark on to the Cobb, the harbour wall that snakes unsteadily into the bay and was made famous by Jane Austen, who had Louisa jump from it in Persuasion, and by John Fowles, who lived in Lyme. The movie adaptation of his novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman starred Meryl Streep as Sarah Woodruff. Its famous trailer begins with the actor sweeping across the Cobb, the hood of her cloak covering her face. For the filming, many buildings in the town were given a 19th-century facade. For a film that plays with time, it seems appropriate that the town’s bookshop kept its temporary fascia for many years.

Our walk back to West Bay is 10 miles long and begins not along the coast but by heading inland. The west Dorset coast is friable – the cliffs keep falling on to the beaches, and the path to Charmouth takes a diversion through a golf course. It wasn’t always like this: once there was a coastal road, Long Entry, between the two settlements. In 1725, Henry Fielding, then aged 17, attempted to abduct his cousin Sarah, with whom he was infatuated, from Lyme. The future novelist made his escape along Long Entry before being stopped by her guardian.

Our walk back to the coast is interrupted by a sculpture on the path. The shape of a woman, angular and determined, a hammer in her outstretched right hand, the other holding above her head the skeleton of a prehistoric animal. There’s another recent sculpture of the same subject, Mary Anning, in Lyme Regis, recording her importance to palaeontology and to the town, but this upland creature, made by Greta Berlin, is wilder, perfectly suited to its woodland setting. The representation of the fossil held aloft is Anning’s discovery: Ichthyosaurus anningae. One cannot walk this section of Dorset’s coast without being aware of its ancient past and the fragile geology close to the surface. Our boat trip began on crumbly sandstone, which gave way to fossil-rich clay as we travelled west.

Charmouth is a pretty village with no harbour; its shallow waters make it popular with those learning to swim or paddleboard. This next section of the South West Coast Path, to West Bay, coincides with the Monarch’s Way, the route that Charles II took to flee to mainland Europe after the civil war. Our day is more peaceful but the path is steep. We’re grateful for Tom’s company – his latest novel, Everything Will Swallow You, is infused with the history and landscape of the Dorset coast and his knowledge enlivens our walk, as do the pasties he brings, baked by his wife, Ellie.

We pass the remains of St Gabriel’s Church, which fell into disuse in the 18th century, although smugglers found within its walls useful shelter for their contraband. Soon we’re on Golden Cap, the highest point on the south coast – 191 metres (627ft) above sea level, with extraordinary views over Lyme Bay. At Seatown, we stop at the Anchor Inn for refreshments, meeting friends who have opted for a shorter walk. From Thorncombe Beacon, we descend to Eype Mouth – in Old English Eype is “Steep Place”; the church in this secluded village was chosen by PJ Harvey to record Let England Shake, a Mercury prize-winning album rich with the echoes of war.

There are further reminders of the coast’s fragility on the final stretch to West Bay – one sign references a cliff fall in 2020, and the path is frequently redirected to safer routes. West Bay, a small stone town, was once the harbour from where Bridport exported its rope and was originally called Bridport Harbour, but had its name changed by the railway company hoping to attract tourists. The railway is long gone – its station now hosts a restaurant in railway carriages – but West Bay, with its stalls for chips and views back towards Lyme, is a fitting place to end, a town out of time.

OS Explorer 116 (Lyme Regis & Bridport) covers the entire walk from Lyme Regis to West Bay. The Lyme Bay Water Taxi operates during the summer months; there is a year-round bus service between West Bay and Lyme Regis. Jon Woolcott is the author of Real Dorset and The Tattooed Hills, Journeys to Chalk Figures

In one corner is bnb-side, a six-room bed and breakfast on the Isle of Portland – a tiny wedge of limestone tied by a narrow ribbon of shingle to the Dorset coast – that was created to help secure the future of the rock’s much-loved arts festival, b-side.

On the other is Airbnb, the San Francisco-based booking colossus. The battle between them is over the three little letters they share.

b-side says the “bnb” in bnb-side means what it has always meant: bed and breakfast. But lawyers for the Silicon Valley titan say the name of the guesthouse, perched on an outcrop just 4 miles long by 1.5 miles wide, threatens the global brand of the $100bn heavyweight.

“We thought the name was both really obvious and really cool,” said Rocca Holly-Nambi, director of b-side. “b-side was founded almost 20 years ago, so when we set up our BnB in 2024 to raise money for the festival, we just popped the ‘bn’ in front because it’s a universally recognised description of what we’re offering.”

Airbnb doesn’t agree. In May, it sent the first of three legal letters to the tiny social enterprise to demand it cease its attempt to register the B&B using the name it had used since it opened its doors.

“They won’t let us compromise by using a different case, an ampersand or an ‘and’,” said Holly-Nambi. “According to Airbnb, we can’t describe our BnB as a BnB at all.”

For bnb-side, losing the argument could mean more than abandoning a clever name. It would mean replacing signage and rewriting websites, social media and all other material referencing and advertising the B&B.

“That’s not just a huge waste of money – of which we don’t have much – and of the equally valuable time of our volunteers, but it would throw b-side’s core income stream into chaos,” said Holly-Nambi. “We’d have to painstakingly build our reputation and brand back up from scratch all over again.”

Raina Summerson, chair of b-side, is fuming and incredulous. “We opened bnb-side because we were completely dependent on public funding and wanted to be more financially secure,” she said. “bnb-side now generates almost half the festival’s annual £250,000 turnover. If it loses its name, we risk having to establish it all over again.”

Airbnb has opposed the name on three separate legal grounds: that consumers will confuse the two brands, that bnb-side could benefit from or damage Airbnb’s reputation, and that bnb-side will financially profit by misrepresenting itself as an official Airbnb service.

b-side is asking the Intellectual Property Office to reject Airbnb’s opposition in full, with costs awarded in their favour. The case is still under way, with no ruling having yet been made.

Airbnb’s claim has hit a nerve on the proud, windswept outcrop. Cat Wightman, manager of bnb-side, said: “It’s pretty bitter. We’ve watched other small, local hospitality businesses go under, and local people unable to afford homes here, who have been negatively affected by the force with which the Airbnb market has conquered Portland. One person owns eight properties on the island, all of which are rented out on Airbnb.”

b-side obtained pro bono advice and is working with the law firm Stevens Hewlett & Perkins to defend them, but the process is still intimidating. “It’s terrifying but we’re not going to back down,” said Holly-Nambi. “We do things differently here in Portland.”

Craig Beaumont, a trademark attorney and senior associate at Barker Brettell, a law firm that specialises in intellectual property, said that for all Airbnb’s might, this would not be an easy or straightforward win for them.

“This feels like an uphill battle they’re embarking on,” he said. “BnB has long been widely understood as shorthand for a descriptive phrase, and descriptive phrases are available for the public to use.”

bnb-side are not the only company who agree with Beaumont: Companies House records show that in the past decade 14 accommodation companies with “bnb” in their name successfully registered their businesses.

Darren Meale, a partner and trademark litigation specialist at Simmons & Simmons, said it was no surprise the term was used so often. “It’s quite punchy of Airbnb to say they’re so well-known that they can monopolise a term that they only incorporated into their name in the first place because it was a descriptive one that everyone immediately understood, and then say that someone else using the term is going to confuse customers and damage them.”

Lee Curtis, a partner and chartered trademark attorney at IP law firm HGF, agreed that Airbnb “may be testing the limits” of the law. But he pointed to another risk for the lodging colossus.

“There’s a public relations angle to take into account,” he said. “Some companies may welcome getting a reputation for aggressive enforcement but that can backfire when the target is a community organisation, like this one.”

Airbnb has been approached for comment.