Monday, May 25 – We got up early to beat the crowds and the heat to the cliffs beyond the beach in Lyme Regis. Low tide was at 8:25 am and the best time to seek fossils is the two hours before and after. The cliffs along the Jurassic Coast are said to be the best place on earth to fossil hunt. And everyone is welcom to come down and give it a shot – just don’t dig into the cliffs itself. Each storm chips away the shale and sandstone revealing relics of the past. That includes both 150 million year old fossils, and junk thrown over the banks from the past centuries of human habitation.
Pan really wanted to find an ammonite nodule – the snail-like creatures that are the , but we only found imprints of them. She did find vertibrae and some other fossils. Lots of metal objects, colored glass rounded by the sea. We even find bits of pottery and porcelain.
We made our way back to the car, stopping by the statue of Mary Anning. Then, back to the car for a 90 minute drive to Isle of Purbeck further east up the coast .
The catalyst for our roadtrip was to see the ruins of Corfe Castle. Originally constructed starting in 1086 by William the Conquerer, the Castle was a royal holding until being sold in 1572, Sir John Bankes purchased the Castle and surrounding lands in 1635 and it stayed in the Bankes family until donated to the National Trust in the 1990’s. During the English Civil War in the 1660’s the Castle was one of the only Royalist strongholds in Southern England and it withstood two seiges by Parlimentarian forces. It fell only due to deciept in a Trojan Horse-style infiltration of the castle. Once Parliment took control of the government, the Castle was ordered to be destroyed as punishment to Bankes for his royalist leanings.
Our visit coincided with a May Fair on the castle grounds and the combination of that and the Bank Holiday and sunny weather made for a very crowded visit.
We walked back into the village and bought tickets for the steam engine train that runs between the Castle and the town of Swanage on the coast. Once in Swanage, we headed directly to the shore to cool our feet.
The beach was packed as folks from all of the country flocked to enjoy the sun and the water as a respite for the record-breaking heat. Monday was the hottest day in May EVER recorded in the UK and the next day is expected to break it again. We wandered the prominade for about and hour. Swanage reminded me of Seaside, Oregon, except. that the arcade and restaraunts parallel the beach on the inland side of the promenade.
By about 3 pm, we had had enough of the heat and crowds and took the train back to our car. We were grateful to get back to our stone cottage that had remained fairly cool.
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