Lyme Regis

Part of the Jurassic Coast

Sailing Yacht Race in Lyme Bay.

A recent short break in Dorset was relaxing.  I just love the place.  During a four day break my cousin and I managed to find some family graves, eat plenty of beautifully fresh fish, visit an Art Gallery and walk on the beach.  One thing we didn't do was find any fossils; if we had found some we could do anything about them anyway as it is an offence to remove or tamper with any fossils found on the beach.

The Jurassic Coast is a great place to find fossils and the best place to find them is around Charmouth and Lyme Regis. The Jurassic clays here formed in a deep tropical sea, the soft muddy bottom of which was often stagnant, creating a sulphurous and anoxic environment, the best conditions for preserving the shells, bones and even soft tissue of dead prehistoric creatures.

It is these stagnant seabed conditions which have given the cliffs around Charmouth their dark colour (and smell!), and it explains why the sediments found here, the 195 million year old Green Ammonite beds and 197 million year old Belamnite Marls, are some of the richest fossil bearing deposits to be found anywhere along the Jurassic Coast.

A lovely, interesting part of the country, a place I have known for over forty years and never tire of going back.