TALES FROM THE WEST

Caroline Wheater talks to Dorset illustrator Jenny Hunt about how the fascinating Jurassic Coast fires up her creative process

The artist and writer Jenny Hunt had heard about hares on Chesil Beach but had never seen one until a few years ago, when she was putting together a book on this Dorset landmark. ‘I went very early one morning to the beach and was trudging along the pebbles when out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of ginger, and a hare took off across Chesil Beach. It then stood at the top of the pebble bank, silhouetted against the sky. There are lots of hollows in the bank and the pebbles would be like a night storage heater for a hare if it’s been a sunny day,’ explains Jenny, who recorded the rare and magical sighting in A Year on Chesil Beach – A Sketchbook. Self-published in 2018, the volume is filled with her enchanting pen, ink and watercolour illustrations, along with thoughtful, at times poetic, observations.

Chesil Beach, the 18-mile-long shingle tombolo (or connective spit), stretching from the Isle of Portland to West Bay, has long fascinated Jenny, who has lived in Dorset since the age of eight, later studying graphic design at Bournemouth College of Art. ‘It’s a very ancient place with a deep history and you get a sense of that with the things you find on it,’ says Jenny, who has collected many fossils

– or ‘treasure’ as Felix, one of her 10 grandchildren, calls it – over the years. She’s found almost perfect fossilised sea urchins, ammonites of various sizes and belemnites. ‘There’s not another coastline like it, the pebbles vary in size from one end to the other [from fist-sized at Portland to pea-sized at Bridport], and it’s said that local smugglers would