CalMax in England: Jurassic Coast (the first part)

Charmouth

2nd March 2013

After a brief stop at a shop near the Piddle Valley (I kid you not), it was off to the coast to see if we could find some fossils. We’d heard a bit about the Jurassic Coast – and the nice lady at the Chesil Beach visitors centre recommended that we visit Charmouth (point “C” on the map).

The view of the coastline from Charmouth was very nice, but we were warned to take care near the base of the cliff, as there had been severe mudslides with the large amount of rain over the summer and autumn.

After visiting the visitor’s centre, and having a chat with the local geologist, we headed off for the most likely part of the beach to find fossils (thanks for the helpful tip). There were plenty of people with their heads down looking amongst the stones on the beach, and we soon joined them. Of course, to get at the ammonites you really need a geologists hammer, as the little suckers are buried inside largish (15 cm) elliptical pebbles. All Cal and I could do was to fossick around in the detritus of the beach.

We did manage to find some fossils – YAY!! There were quite a number of belemnite fragments (long skinny squid like things), and we did manage to find some ammonite fossils. The one on the right is obvious - just imbedded in the pebble. The ones on the left look gold in colour because they've been turned into Iron Pyrites (fools gold). The one on the left is a fragment of a large ammonite (about 20cm in diameter), and the one in the middle has at least three smaller ones (OK, so that one was given to me by a nice lady from the Heritage Centre).

From Charmouth we headed into Lyme Regis (the tourist capital of the Jurassic Coast) simply because we could, and it was nice and close. After parking for free (yes, repeat that: parking for free in England, and in a tourist town at that) we found a place that satisfied Cal’s appetite for an English happy meal, followed by a walk along the foreshore.