On our way to the next stop, the daughter is again on the search for stone circles. She finds one that we go down through tiny one way lanes and possibly end up in someone’s farm but in the field is a mushroom looking structure surrounded by wildflowers. A huge slab resting on three big uprights.
Then onto Lyme we go .We’re on the hunt for fossils. Off we go after researching the tides as Lyme Regis has huge tides that when they recede reveal ammonite fossils and because there was a Victorian age tip at the top of the hill, old ornaments and bits of glass turn up on the tide.
We are so excited to find old bits of crockery and bottles that for a time we forget the fossil search but then we start. Not an easy job as their is quite a crowd on the beach bent over like birds sieving through the sands and under rocks but we return to our little cottage just outside Lyme in Axminster and go through our haul.
We go to the one local pub with it’s quaint thatched roof where the owner has a brother who lives in…guess where? Sydney of course. I sometimes think half of England lives in Australia. There's an old telephone booth that has been turned into a library that we find on our way to the pub and then we return to our little cottage which is a part of a complex of old cider making buildings. We awake with the soft bleating of lambs and their mothers grazing below.
Today we go to Lyme village and explore the gardens along the coast, passing beneath the ammonite shaped street lights and past all the pastel coloured beach houses where we lunch at the Rock Point Inn where I have the famous Coronation chicken which is oddly good! It’s got curry paste, cinnamon, mango chutney and chicken on a bed of lettuce. Prince Charles has revived it again, possibly the only good thing coming out of the Coronation!
Afterwards I go through the old mill as we wait for the tides to turn again. I find a beautiful vase in the Museum, porcelain and brick shaped with three holes in the top for single flowers. It’s a Dutch invention and in the Delft colours of blue and white. The cut outs at the top are little hearts. It’s my one special purchase of this trip.
And then we’re on the hunt again. The tide has turned and we find more lovely glass pieces and then head for the rocks where the ammonites nestle mainly under the rocks and embedded in the strange black/grey mud of the hillsides where the famous Annie found her fossilised skeletons of dinosaurs. We find tiny pyrite ammonites and even though after a couple of hours we only find about five, we are satisfied. We walk back with a guy who does tours and has worked at the museum for thirty years and he fills us in on his love of fossils and the hunt. We are in agreement. We will be back.
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