A tad windy this morning, but it wasn't the rocking of MB that woke me. It happened to be Ian and a crow! I woke with a start well before 6 to find Ian towering above me and climbing onto the bed. Blimey...what could he be up to? 😉Turns out he was desperate to open the roof skylight to chase off a crow as he could hear it pecking away at what he presumed to be, was the solar panel cables! .
We would be leaving this morning for Charmouth, a gas supplier had been found at a Charmouth Caravans roughly 20 odd miles away. The quote of £32.50 for a 6kg container was the cheapest we had found in these parts. There was to be a bonus of this detour off the main road, about a mile further along the road was Charmouth Beach and a place full of fossils. It was part of the Jurassic Coast, so we abandoned any idea of going to see Forde Abbey, another HH property, at Chard until tomorrow.
There was a huge car park, and no mention of not accommodating motorhomes. There were still issues with trying to pay, though. Every time he tried to use the 'parking over the phone' app, it timed out. He just wasn't quick enough! Hmm, appears I don't really need to search for fossils at all. I have one very close at hand! 😂 Anyway, he raided my purse and found the pound coins especially saved for washing machines on sites. 6 of my precious pound coins were fed to the machine!
So we walked along the beach. This was a mixture of wet sand, mud and pebbles, more pebbles than sand and not being as sure-footed as I once was, stuck to the wet sand. To find fossils, though, it was necessary to get to the cliff edge and search among the fallen mud and rocks. But first the rock pools beckoned and so glad this was our first port of call because I found my first ammonite. More appeared the further along the rock pools we went, all embedded in the stone surrounding the pools and none I could actually pick up. But I was ecstatic (that doesn't take much) fossils at last. I found out later these were called Beef Rock Ammonites.
The rocks and pebbles were every bit as scary as I had thought. Gingerly I placed my feet and only once did I have to save myself as one of the larger rocks rolled from under me. We must have spent a further hour looking, one child aged about 10 gave a yell and in her hand was a small rock with a perfectly formed ammonite in it. Was I envious???? Anyway, I congratulated her on her find and continued in the hope that I too would find something like that too. I picked up a broken piece of trilobite and one broken Belemnite, but nothing as good as that girls.
mm
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| Belemnite |
Ian found something, a stopper from ancient pottery perhaps?
kk
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| The cliff face was made up of layer upon layer of soft mud, silt and clay
built up over many millions of years. These are classified as
'Sedimentary Rocks', as they are made up of billions of tiny particles
of sediment that have been turned to stone by millions of years of
pressure from the layers above. (taken from:- https://charmouth.org/chcc/cliffs/) |
And surely this is a mammouth tooth (much imagination is needed 😉
A small fossil museum and centre was upstairs. We really should have gone in there first because everything one needed to know about finding fossils was in there. What sort of rocks to look out for and hidden signs that a fossil was in them. Still, we didn't, so more fool us!
Having spent nearly 4 hours, it was time to head off to the site booked for tonight. Place called West Lea Farm in Beaminster. So the post code was put into the sat nav, route set and found it was only a few miles from Charmouth.
OMG, how many times have folk told us not to follow the sat nav if the road chosen is narrow! Well, we did follow the directions and I didn't think a lane could get any narrower. At one point the wing mirrors had to be put in, and then we only just made it. God help us or anyone coming the opposite way. After a very fraught 30 minutes, Ian decided to stop and put coordinates in instead. This showed we were very close and had missed the turning somewhere along the lane. Turning was impossible, so all we could do was continue. The lane became one of potholes and water, and part of it had grass growing down the middle. Eventually, after almost back tracking by taking left turns, eventually we reached the farm! That was a scary ride, Ian was very quiet, he said he was concentrating but the relieved laugh as we arrived said it all.
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| Hidden potholes! |
kk
This is a lovely place, very quiet apart from the Cockerel..argggg..nooooo.....a small brook runs alongside our pitch, and already I have seen something large and brown swooping low over the ground (couldn't identify it but definitely bigger than a Buzzard) and a small wren sang out on a broken tree trunk, greeting. us as we arrived.
Oh blast...that brown bird, well I now know it to be a blooming Canada Goose, and here was me getting all excited about seeing another species of Raptor.
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