Devon Life - Fossil Hunting in Lyme Regis

Yes, I'm writing after 9 long months, after the longest gap in my blog writing and ending 2018 with the smallest number of blog entries! Good news - I'm still alive and have a lot to write. Bad news - life has been incredibly busy (in a good way) and none of my stories are ending up in my blog anymore. Right before the end of 2018, I wrote in my new diary a to-do list for the new year and writing more blog posts was one of those. 

It's almost the end of February and I still couldn't manage to get one entry in my blog and my to-do list is only getting longer. But better late than never. Starting to write from today and hopefully this year I'll write more posts than last year including all the pending travel stories. I just finished reading the book "This is Going to Hurt" by Adam Kay. I really enjoyed reading the book and especially the short diary entries motivated me to start writing again and reminded me that it doesn't have to be long but it's important to continue the practice of writing. So, starting off this year's blog entry with a quick one from last weekend's trip to Lyme Regis in east Devon. 

One of the main reasons why I decided to live in Devon is the proximity to the coast. It's very easy to get to the beach by train, Dawlish, Teignmouth in just 20-30mins and Cornwall in few hours. However, so far I've been to the beaches in south-west and didn't have the chance to explore much of east Devon. I've few places to visit, Lyme Regis being the first stop among them. It's famous for it's beautiful prehistoric landscape, and million years old fossils. As written on the official website, "The local blue lias clay found to the east and west contains the remarkable fossil remains of sea creatures from the Jurassic seas of 180 million years ago." Also, the first complete ichthyosaur in the UK was found in this area by Mary Anning hundreds of years ago.

Charmouth beach

Traveling there isn't much difficult, apparently the 9A bus goes directly from Exeter bus station, but we took a 40min train to Axminster and then bus to Lyme Regis that takes about 25mins. We got lucky with some beautiful sunny weekends in February and Lyme Regis looked gorgeous in sunshine when we reached. We walked around for a bit, popped into some fossil shops, and went to get some fish n chips as it was lunch time and we didn't want to feel peckish while fossil hunting.

Lyme Regis

After doing a bit more walk after lunch and a drink at the beautiful seaside restaurant, we decided to go to the Charmouth beach for fossil hunting as it's renowned for fossils. It's about an hour walk from Lyme Regis but because it was already afternoon, we decided to take the bus and spend more time there. Bus took about 24mins. 

Charmouth looked equally beautiful and you can surely spot a lot of people facing downwards, which means they're after those hidden gems, and we followed. Unfortunately we couldn't spot a dinosaur but we were happy with our little fossils and that we were lucky with the weather and didn't come back empty handed.

On our way back we walked to Lyme Regis, took little more than hour. It was uphill for a long time and we came back with sore legs (we frequently do long walks and I'm used to running, but that knocked us off) but happy hearts. The landscape in that area is incredibly beautiful and I'm looking forward to exploring more of east Devon this summer :)