A Christmas Coast

Now we're a Christmassy family - debate rages in our household from September onwards about how many trees we can reasonably accommodate, and whether it is advisable to have a miniature fir in each child's bedroom as well as in our own. But we are mere Herods in comparison with The Bull, which welcomes you with an open fire piled with pine cones in reception and mulled cider in the bar. Next morning, we headed to Cerne Abbas to view its resident giant, a chalk figure who bestrides a hill naked but for a large club and grumpy expression. I had been greatly looking forward to inspecting him and measuring his length, so it was a slight let-down to find out that you can't get any closer than an A352 lay-by across a mist-veiled valley.

We tacitly decided to respect the 'keep out' signs and not climb the hill to him, but mostly because a shoot was taking place in the field between the road and the giant, and we would no doubt have been shot down by a stray gun, then savaged by an overenthusiastic retriever. Our disappointment was washed away with crumpets and hot chocolate in the kind of tea shop that tragically became extinct in most of the UK in the late Seventies but is still going strong in Dorset.

The area is rich in other extinct species, as the Jurassic coast, otherwise known as Chesil Beach, is a mere mile or two from Bridport. Finding fossils is easy enough - even our two-year-old daughter, Olga, inadvertently gathered one among every six pebbles she managed to pick up in her numbed fingers, until she strayed too close to the water and her wellies got swamped. But Joseph, despite being wrapped in a Babygro, a cashmere sleepsuit, a padded all-in-one, a hat and an anorak, was outraged by the drop in temperature: his face went completely purple with rage, or cold, or both.

How convenient, then, that a short stroll down the beach is the Hive Beach Café, which my local friend claims to be 'the finest, smartest seafood café this nation has ever seen'. After huge mounds of scallops, pancetta, black pudding and chips, we had no trouble agreeing. Even Joe's temperature and temper improved enough for him to do justice to his gargantuan baby portion of fish and chips.

Faces pink and tingling with the cold, we retreated to Brid-port, which is in itself an extremely festive place. Dusk was closing in, and South Street and East Street were ablaze with fairy lights. Browsing in the windows of Kennedy estate agents, we indulged in the age-old fantasy of selling up in London and moving out to the wilds of the South Coast, where we would buy a large thatched cottage, keep horses, learn to fish, buy a dinghy and make goat's cheese. Bridport is a peculiarly successful little town; its Dickensian streets are quite unlike most country market towns in that the vast majority of shops are independent one-offs. It's the kind of place where every shopper walking past ought to be wearing a crinoline, or carrying a large turkey. We browsed the tiny Jackdaws shop for curiously shaped presents and looked for antique children's books in Bridport Old Bookshop.

By now it was dark and the children were drooping, so we retreated to the warmth and candlelight of The Bull. After the babies' bedtime, we went down the creaking wooden stairs to the ground-floor dining room where, seated in an alcove lit by tea lights, we and our friends had an absolute feast of bouillabaisse, steak and chocolate cheesecake. It is very hard to eat healthily here, particularly when you've spent the day facing the wind - nothing whips up the appetite like salt spray on your face - and there's no point trying to avoid carbs after breakfast when your body is screaming for fish and chips. We listened to the call of our tummies for Sunday lunch and filled them with the most succulent haddock and chips at the Harbour Inn in Lyme before cautiously venturing on to The Cobb for a post-lunch promenade. Although when you're carrying a baby disguised as the Michelin man in a backpack, the uneven spray-soaked surface of the pier seems even more treacherous than it was when it did for Louisa Musgrove in Persuasion.

We rounded off the weekend with Advent carols in the Norman splendour of Sherborne Abbey, where a huge congregation sang carols by candlelight and the vicar gave our children a bag of toys containing, oddly, a plastic snake, which was a great hit and kept them relatively quiet. We set off through the backstreets of the town for London, radiating goodwill to all.

NEED TO KNOW: THE BULL HOTEL, BRIDPORT

DECOR With seven Christmas trees dotted around, fireplaces and wood-burning stoves and an abundance of greenery and baubles, the place swirls with yuletide spirit. The downstairs rooms are duck-egg blues and greys with lots of wood. The owners, Richard and Nikki Cooper, quit music business jobs to buy the coaching inn, which was built in 1568, and had become a DHSS hostel. They have been doing up the place ever since, spending around £500,000 on Manuel Canovas and Designers Guild wallpapers and antique furniture.
ROOMS The 14 bedrooms are flamboyant. Ours, the Flowers Suite, had a feature wall papered with a bright pink and lime green swirly flower pattern and was large and cosy. Or try the Gold Room, which has a 300-year-old mirror from a Paris flea market. They all have flatscreen TVs and antique furniture, Frette linen and large, expensive mattresses.
BATHROOMS Clean and straightforward with glass bottles of Neal's Yard products. Some have an antique roll-top.
FOOD The South African chef, Marc Montgomery, worked for Marco Pierre White, and has perfected a hearty and satisfying menu of excellent fish and seafood and local meat. The pork belly was all the seven deadly sins rolled into one on a plate.
TREATS It is child-friendly with monitors and a wicker basket of toys in our room. Cots were made up with teddies. The Ostler Room is a games room with a gigantic television; and the ballroom is straight out of Hardy. The Venner bar has a nice line in martinis.
FELLOW GUESTS Londoners looking to copy the Coopers who spend their days dreaming in front of the estate agents' windows.
TARIFF A three-night Christmas package including dinner, bed and breakfast and Christmas lunch from £270 per person.

The Bull Hotel, 34 East Street, Bridport, Dorset (01308 422 878; www.thebullhotel.co.uk)

OUT AND ABOUT IN DORSET

GETTING THERE We borrowed a Jaguar that was so smart our friends' neighbours stared, and no one was sick, so it was a result all round. It took two and a half hours from London.
WHERE TO STAY Summer Lodge in Evershot is luxurious ( www.summerlodgehotel.co.uk). Stock Hill Country House Hotel in Gillingham is a Victorian pile which has a helicopter pad ( www.stockhillhouse.co.uk). Moonfleet Manor, overlooking Chesil Beach, is a cream-coloured Georgian manor house with pool ( www.moonfleetmanorhotel.co.uk).
WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK This is foodie heaven: the sea serves up gigantic crabs and scallops as well as fish (and chips). Meat-lovers should take heart from the fact that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is based here. River Cottage is near Bridport and the River Cottage Store, a restaurant and shop, is in Axminster ( www.rivercottage.net). The Hive Beach Café serves good food in a world-class location ( www.hivebeachcafe.co.uk). The Harbour Inn (01297 442 299) on The Cobb in Lyme Regis was warm and welcoming after a blast of sea air. Its fish and chips came admirably fast, and what remained after Olga had nose-dived the plate was very good.
WHAT TO DO Thomas Hardy's cottage in Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester is so picturesque it's a puzzle to know how he managed to be so miserable. You can walk for miles down the Jurassic coast, searching for fossils and examining amazing rock formations. Moonfleet is a smuggler's paradise, or so the book would have us believe. Anyway, it is very atmospheric. And there are Iron Age forts and cliff walks in abundance. Modbury Farm has piglets to cuddle, sheep to stroke and clotted cream to take away ( www.modburyfarm.co.uk).
CELEB SPOTTING Princes Harry and William have yomped in fatigues here.