England part VIII: Charmouth

Right east of Lyme Regis lies the tiny village of Charmouth. A landslide had closed the path one could otherwise take along the beach between the two, so we had to drive the five minutes there. However, we had read that it was quite likely that we could find fossils on the beach in Charmouth, and I think we both had secret dreams of finding a new species of dinosaur.

That was not to be, but we did spend a couple of hours climbing over mostly rocky terrain and in my case digging a little from the hillside with my bare hands. There were several other fossil hunters out and about and you could easily tell the difference between them and us, because they'd gone through the small bother of actually bringing little hammers to crack open rocks with. Apparently, this is how you find the vast majority of fossils.

Still, I managed to find a couple of actual fossils, although the finest one, which was, believe it or not, the first rock I pulled out of the hillside, crumbled into pieces before I even got to the car park. All that's left is a photograph and the memories. Sniffle.

All Charmouth pics here.

You can clearly see the imprint of 3-4 fossils, right? Now most of it is fine dust, covering a spot of the Charmouth beach parking lot. Curses!


There were several rocks like this one. I'm not sure what molded them this way, but they're cool.


Further east there's Golden Cap, the highest point on the south coast of England.