Britain's Jurassic Coast, a 150km stretch from Devon to Dorset, offers rich pickings, writes Jason Michael
WELL-KNOWN for cream teas and genteel seaside resorts, Devon and Dorset, on England's south coast, also offer visitors a year-round chance to bond with their prehistoric past, visit the site of a modern-day plunder and stretch the legs on Britain's longest national trail.
A 150km stretch of coast extending from the seaside resort of Exmouth, in east Devon, to Studland Bay, in west Dorset, has been designated the Jurassic Coast thanks to the 185 million years of sequential geological record exposed here. Designated England's first Unesco Natural World Heritage site, the coast in fact dates from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods - but try fitting that on promotional literature.
This broad geological parentage is reflected in the landscape. Exmouth, a short bus ride from Exeter, is flanked by cliffs hewn from Devon's characteristic iron-based red rocks, thought to have formed 250 million to 200 million years ago. Farther east at Ladram Bay are stunning sea stacks of the same colour, while a rusty band of discoloured water shadows the shoreline. This terrain then gives way to Dorset's white chalk cliffs - a mere 65 million years old - and the end of the Jurassic Coast arrives at Ballard Down headland.
Thanks to coastal erosion and regular land slippages, this coastline throws up a rich and accessible supply of fossils. The remains of whole dinosaurs, including ichthyosaurs, have been found, as well as fossilised dinosaur footprints and tiny mammal teeth.
Mary Anning (1799-1847), a woman from Lyme Regis clearly unafraid to get her hands dirty, became a foremost fossilist of her time despite no formal education; her work helped provide the platform for the fields of geology and palaeontology.
Today the beaches at Lyme Regis and nearby Charmouth, in particular, are world- renowned fossil sites, and budding palaeontologists can scratch and sift for fossils in the clay and mud deposits. Winter can be a particularly good time for this, as the seasonal storms that drive waves on to the cliffs can leave rich pickings at low and falling tide. The beaches are also less likely to be crowded outside summer. Among the remains you're likely to come across are fossils of small spiralled-shaped ammonites - molluscs linked to the octopus and squid - and those of squid-like creatures called belemnites.
Guided fossil walks take place throughout the year at different sites on the coast, but if you're sticking with the DIY approach you should follow local fossiling etiquette. This boils down to avoiding dangerous sites, not hacking into cliffs for fossils, and leaving enough for everyone else. If you make a major find - this probably means discovering a dinosaur that will be named after you - notify the authorities.
THE TOWN of Lyme Regis itself resembles a seaside resort designed by Ikea, with its attractive 13th-century harbour, a beach of yellow sand offset by lightly tanned stones, and a long promenade peopled by couples with well-groomed children and even better-groomed dogs.
As well as its fossil heritage, the town caters for those with literary leanings. The French Lieutenant's Woman was written by local author John Fowles, and scenes from the film adaptation, starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, were filmed in the town. Jane Austen, who visited in the summer of 1804, set part of Persuasion here. Beatrix Potter followed her example 100 years later and used views from the town in her book The Tale of Little Pig Robinson.
This theme of visiting writers taking the sea air repeats itself elsewhere. The charms of Devon's Budleigh Salterton, for example, all tea rooms and discreet wealth, has in the past attracted the writers Anthony Trollope, Noel Coward and PG Wodehouse.
Today it boasts, perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest croquet lawn outside London.
Bearing in mind this coast's long history of smuggling, beachcombers should keep an eye out for detritus dating from January 2007, when the container vessel MSC Napoli was scuttled in the wake of a storm. Hundreds of scavengers flocked to Devon's Branscombe beach, where some 40 containers - carrying items such as car parts, nappies and wine - washed up, and a two-day plunder ensued.
A memorial at Branscombe beach describes the Napoli as an "unfortunate visitor" - a view presumably not shared by the folk last seen wheeling away an €18,000 BMW motorbike from the ship's end-of-the-line sail.
Despite the legal requirement for those finding goods to report them within 28 days, old salvage habits apparently linger, as does the Napoli, which remains partially visible above the water, with a salvage barge still working alongside.
While boat trips to view the coast can be taken from a number of towns, walking along the National Trust South West Coast Path is the best way to explore the area. The path runs through the Jurassic Coast on a 1,000km trek around the toe of England that starts in Somerset and ends in Dorset.
The Jurassic section of the trail takes the walker up cliff and down combe, past forests and hill-top follies and through smugglers' coves and overgrown undercliffs formed by landslides.
At times the trail dwindles to little more than a band of flattened grass, yet it maintains right of way over almost everything it encounters: fields of crops and cattle, fairways and huge caravan parks that stretch to the shore like aluminium glaciers.
Navigation any time of the year is easy: just keep the sea to one side and allow the National Trust wayposts, stiles and steps to do the rest. Be warned, though: the path invariably travels up the steepest part of any cliff it encounters, which makes for lovely panoramic views but lots - and lots - of steps.
Walkers should be aware that the mileage on trail signposts can occasionally be eccentric - and not in a shorter-distance-than-I-thought way.
The South West Coast Path is intersected by local trails for visitors favouring shorter excursions, and there are plenty of towns with accommodation and camping and caravan sites along the route. A Jurassic Coast bus service shuttles between all the route's main access points.
IF YOU'RE UP for something a little bit different, trek through Axmouth to Lyme Regis Undercliffs National Nature Reserve, the result of a huge landslip at Christmas 1839, when six hectares slid toward the sea in 48 hours. Today the Undercliff is a miniature lost world, a sheltered jungle-like environment with its own microclimate that has produced a dense growth of ash woodland, hazel and other vegetation that can verge on the claustrophobic.
The path is a winding one that sidles apologetically past rocks and trees, and while the sea can occasionally be heard, views of it are few and far between. Walkers must stay on the trail for a good 12km because of the dangerous terrain and the area's nature-reserve status, and there's a sense of relief on finally seeing the sky as the vegetation recedes.
All along this coast are reasons to linger, but for those tired after a day's walking, fossiling or both, I'd recommend a stopover in Beer. There's obviously the name - derived from the Old English word for wooded area - but if bucolic did brickwork, it would be Beer. Yes, it's crowded in summer, but this small fishing village, nestled between two white headlands, offers a stream running down its main street, a beach lined with painted bathing huts and boats, and the sense that there's always time in a day for cream teas. Failing that, swimming in Beer never sounded like the worst plan in the world.
www.jurassiccoast.com, www.southwestcoastpath.com
Where to stay
Bridge House Hotel.
115 East Street, Bridport, Dorset, 00-44-1308-423371, www.bridgehousebridport.co.uk. A converted 17th-century town house with charmingly crooked bedrooms.
The Long Range Hotel. 5 Vales Road, Budleigh Salterton, Devon, 00-44-1395-443321, www.thelongrangehotel.co.uk.
Perfectly formed hotel that serves an excellent breakfast and even better hot chocolate.
Mercure Southgate Hotel. Southernhay East, Exeter, 00- 44-1392-412812, www.mercure. com. A modern, central hotel.
Eyre Court Hotel. Queen Street, Seaton, Devon, 00-44-1297-21455, www.eyrecourthotel.co.uk.
A cheap and cheerful option if you're passing through.
Old Lyme Guest House. 29 Coombe Street, Lyme Regis, 00-44-1297-442929, www.oldlymeguesthouse.co.uk. A former post office from where Jane Austen posted a letter to her sister in 1804.
Where to eat
Thai Orchid Restaurant. 5 Cathedral Yard, Three Gables, Exeter, 00-44-1392-214215, www.thaiorchidrestaurant.co.uk. Thai dishes served within a cassock's throw of Exeter Cathedral.
Barrel o' Beer. Fore Street, Beer, 00-44-1297-20099, http://barrelobeer.co.uk.
Serves fish caught offshore and evocatively named ales.
The Bull Hotel. 34 East Street, Bridport, 00-44-1308- 422878, www.thebullhotel. co.uk. A boutique hotel and gastropub serving modern US food with a local twist.
The Salty Monk. Church Street, Sidford, Sidmouth, Devon, 00-44-1395-513174.
A stopover for salt-trading monks in the 16th century.
The Anchor Inn. Fore Street, Beer, Seaton, Devon, 00-44-1297-20386, www.anchorinn-beer.com. A tavern with tasty pub grub.
Where to go
Lyme Regis Philpott Museum. Bridge Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset, 00-44-1297- 443370. Museum chronicling the life of local fossilist
Mary Anning (1799-1847).
Golden Cap. Climb to the Jurassic Coast's highest point and take in the 800 hectares
of National Trust land below.
Exeter Cathedral.
Cathedral Close, Exeter, 00-44-1392-255573, www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk. Boasting the longest unbroken Gothic ceiling in the world.
Exeter's fourth-century underground passages. www.exeter.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=2914
Portland Museum. Wakeham, Portland. 00-44-1305-821804. A small museum that tells tales of smuggling and shipwrecks.
Flybe (www.flybe.ie) flies from Dublin to Exeter and Southampton. Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies from Dublin, Knock and Shannon to Bristol.