WEEK 1

DAY 4

Exeter

Today we had arranged to drive to Lyme Regis and have lunch with a couple we had met while they were on holiday in New Zealand. I had always wanted to visit Lyme and look at the famous cliffs from which all of the Jurassic fossils had been found. On the way we decided to visit the church at Sidbury where more Goldsworthys had lived.

Sidbury

Sidbury is a small village centred around a cluster of shops and the Church. Many of the headstones in the churchyard have been removed (or destroyed) but this is not too surprising as the Church boasts that the crypt and part of the tower date from Norman times.  The Goldsworthy family had moved east from Clyst St George at some time and from Sidbury migrated to London where they established a thriving bakery business. It is possible they learned this trade at the bakery at Sidbury.

Church at Sidbury

Shops in Sidbury

The Bakery at Sidbury - did a Goldworthy work here?

Lyme Regis

We arrived in Lyme Regis late in the  morning - and so did most other people including the tour coaches and the regular buses. The centre of the town is a contortion of narrow winding streets that drop down off the plain behind into a small valley and then onto the beach. We were looking for a small street that ran to the right off the main road about half way down the hill as you come into the town centre. But there are no land marks to judge where you are so half way can only be deduced once you have reached the bottom (the road we wanted was of course too small to warrant a sign post and the locals  conveniently all know where it is). So we reached the bottom of the hill and rightly concluded that we now needed to be half way up. Simple, turn around and look for the street on the left - but not in this traffic. The tour coaches had all stopped to disgorge tourists forcing the regular buses to stop in the middle of the road, forcing all other traffic to stop, and there we sat for some time contemplating the magnificent view of the back of a bus.

However we did escape the traffic and we found the apartment where we had a pleasant lunch looking out over the English Channel. The sea looked remarkably calm but was mostly covered in fog.

After lunch we took a pathway down to the boat harbour, walking out onto the famous breakwater (The Cob), then east along the beach past the town and towards the famous fossil cliffs. Being late in summer, the cliffs were showing the wear and tear of thousands of feet, driven by hopeful fossil hunters. Despite my years of successful fossil gathering, these cliffs had been picked clean. There were plenty of wonderful fossils to be had in the fossil and curio shops that line the main shopping street of Lyme, but to the expert eye 99% of the fossils were not from these parts, or even this country, and many of the so-called "crystals" were nothing more than cut glass.

But it is the experience that counts, rather than the (empty) collection of fossils.

Part of central Lyme Regis	The beach north of The Cob, Lyme	The Slipway selling everything for your holiday
The Cob, Lyme	The boat harbour behind The Cob	The famous fossil cliffs, Lyme