Weymouth sits at the centre of some of the finest coastal scenery in England, and most of the best of it is within thirty minutes.
The Isle of Portland lies immediately south, connected to town by the narrow neck of Chesil Beach. It is a different world from the Weymouth seafront: flat, windswept, and quarried almost to bedrock in places. Portland stone built St Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace; the old quarries are now sculpture parks and wildlife reserves. Portland Castle, one of Henry VIII's best-preserved coastal forts, sits at the northern end, and the lighthouse at Portland Bill marks one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the Channel. Allow a full day and walk the coastal path around the Bill.
Lulworth Cove is a twelve-mile drive east along the coast road — a near-perfect circular bay formed when the sea punched through hard limestone and rapidly eroded the softer rock behind it. The beach gets crowded on summer weekends, but the geology is extraordinary and the cliff path east to Durdle Door, a natural limestone arch, is one of the great short walks on the Jurassic Coast.