Motorists fume at Durdle Door’s ‘rip-off’ parking charges
The private estate that owns Durdle Door, the popular beauty spot, has raised its car parking charges by 66 per cent, The Telegraph can reveal.
Motorists expressed outrage on social media after discovering that the cost of parking at Lulworth Cove on the Jurassic Coast appeared to have risen dramatically since March.
The 12,000-acre Lulworth Estate, which runs the car park and facilities on the five-mile stretch of coastline and is owned by the Weld family, is charging £30 for caravans to park, £20 for all-day parking for cars and £5 for motorbikes.
Online posts from March show it was charging £20 for caravans to park, £12 for all-day parking for cars and £2 for motorbikes.
Durdle Door is one of Dorset’s most popular attractions, with some 750,000 visitors to the area every year.
The influx of tourists in recent years has prompted a backlash from locals, with residents erecting signs saying “go home” at the peak of numbers during the Covid lockdown.
In 2021, Lulworth Estate called on the Government to impose a code of behaviour after it said visitors had mistreated the area.
Anti-social behaviour
The council rolled out measures to curb anti-social behaviour in Dorset the same year, including a ban on beach camping.
Similar frustrations boiled over in Snowdonia, where tourists were accused of littering, illegal parking and anti-social behaviour.
One user on TripAdvisor said the car parking charges for Durdle Door were “a rip-off”.
“They’ve got you once you’ve planned your day and arrived,” said the user, posting under the name “Caroline”.
Abandoned
Another user said they had abandoned a short trip to the beach because they were put off by the minimum £10 charge to park, which allows cars to stay for up to four hours.
The new charges put Durdle Door alongside some of the most expensive seaside areas for parking, including Brighton, where drivers can expect to pay around £24 to park all day.
Car parking tickets at Durdle Door also enable drivers to park at the nearby Lulworth Cove, part of the World Heritage Site.
The area of the Jurassic Coast that includes Durdle Door, a natural limestone formation, became England’s first natural World Heritage Site after it was designated by Unesco in 2001.
The Lulworth Estate was purchased in 1641 by Humphrey Weld, the grandson of a merchant and former Lord Mayor of London, and has stayed in the family ever since.
It was reinvented as a tourist destination by Wilfrid Weld, who died in 2016, and oversaw the estate’s reinvention into a modern business.
The Lulworth Estate was contacted for comment.