Experience the best of Poole

Poole stands on Poole Harbour in Dorset, one of the largest natural harbours in the world, a sheltered basin dotted with islands and fringed by heath and reedbeds. The old town grew around a quay, trading with Newfoundland in the eighteenth century, and its streets of merchants' houses and pubs and the Poole Museum recall that wealth. A ferry port on the harbour sends boats to the Channel Islands and France.

Brownsea Island, in the harbour, is a nature reserve with red squirrels and peacocks, and the site of the first scout camp in 1907. Sandbanks, a sandy peninsula at the harbour mouth, has a beach, and a chain ferry crosses to Studland, where heath and dunes fringe a long shore. Old Harry Rocks nearby mark the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast, and Corfe Castle and a steam railway lie on the Isle of Purbeck.

Dorset crab and lobster, fish and chips on the quay, Dorset apple cake, Dorset knob biscuits and Blue Vinney cheese fill the local table. The quayside is busy in summer and quiet in winter.