Beer (not the drink) and fossils
Our Great British Adventure
April 18, 2018We woke (after a disturbed night thanks to jet lag) to a calm, sunny day. Originally my plan had been to head over to Cornwall for the day - or even just drive the Dartmoor moors - but that was a bigger day than we felt we could face so I looked around for more local attractions. This would also allow us to head down to the beach at low tide in the afternoon to go fossil hunting - the actual reason we were in Lyme Regis. We weren't up to anything Deep and Meaningful so I selected "Pecorama" at a nearby village called Beer. It had a miniature steam train we could ride behind:) as well as extensive model railways which we both enjoy looking at.
I'd wanted to book a ride on a real steam train during our trip but either they weren't yet running for the season, were booked out months in advance, or only ran on weekends which never gelled geographically with our itinerary. Silly as it was, the miniature version would have to do. I also dug out my dashcam, which I'd forgotten about when we picked up the car at Heathrow. By the end of the trip it had filmed 64 hours of footage, spread over 770 5 minute files. Wow. I'd had a vague idea of making a 10 minute "hits" video from it, but that's just daunting.
The visitor centre in Lyme Regis gave very clear instructions on where to look for fossils and we head out along the beach. I kept being distracted by beach glass, Victorian era ceramics, iron pyrite (fool's gold) and other potentially very nice cabbable stones. We both ended up finding some fossils though, some huge which were amazing to see, and some small enough to carry back with us. We walked back a different route and eventually realised the huge flat slab we were walking over was full of large fossils. Incredible.
