IT’S the first instalment of our look back at 2023.

Here we look back at the stories that hit the headlines between January and March.

We’ll be running pieces about the remaining months over the next few days.

January

Studland’s Middle Beach Café closed its doors for good

Goose barnacles believed to be worth ’thousands of pounds’ washed up in Boscombe

A stolen car was involved in a number of crashes on the A338

Studland was named among the UK’s poshest villages

A mystery Dorset resident won £10,000 a month for a year after winning a National Lottery draw

Beach hut owners held a protest over plans to increase the cost to rent beach huts

A beach hut on Mudeford Sandbank went on the market for £450,000

An elderly woman praised an Amazon Alexa for ‘saving her life’ over Christmas

Figures showed BCP Council's Bayside restaurant ‘lost’ £176,000 in four weeks

February

Drew Mellor resigned as leader of BCP Council with immediate effect

The Norfolk Royale Hotel was sold to a coach operator for an undisclosed sum

A fire broke out at a derelict college building in Poole

Ryanair announced new routes to Edinburgh and Venice

President Zelensky and Rishi Sunak met Ukrainian troops in Purbeck

A fire ripped through a thatched cottage in a village near Wimborne

Mcdonald’s opened a new restaurant in Christchurch

Bournemouth and Poole were named among the ‘top 50 worst places to live in England’

March

A major incident was declared following an oil spill at Poole Harbour

Holland & Barrett opened a store at Castlepoint

TUI announced it would be offering 13 new routes from Bournemouth Airport

Sandbanks was named one of the world's most expensive places to live after a bungalow sold for more than £13m

A couple was fined after a Sandbanks mansion rented out on Airbnb was trashed by gatecrashers

Bournemouth entrepreneurs, Richard and Fiona Jones, appeared on Dragons’ Den

Repair Shop star Jay Blades opened his first store at Poole’s Kingland shopping complex

The Works opened a new store in Ringwood

Tributes were paid to former Daily Echo editor Gareth Weekes