5 Oct. - Lyme Regis

 Image: Fossil hunters between Lyme Regis and Charmouth

Down Lyme Road, through Yawl + Uplyme, then Pound Road + Cobb Road, past Cobb Arms + onto The Cobb itself ... Much written, much filmed + much walked. The tame Channel swell still thumps, sprays + foams, damping the high + raking promenade pavement - pocked with ancient fossil. This is till a working harbour, though the fishing fleet share it now with fishing + joy-cruise tour boats.

Eastward, the new seawall cradles the snaking coastline, protecting it from the ceaseless tides + waves, + saving it from the slumping, rattling erosion of the coast to Charmouth - The Black Ven - it's Jurassic bounty daily washed out, to be picked over by the low-tide onrush of 'just for a day' paleontologists, scrounging for their own tiny, tangible piece of far-distant time - ammonite, crinoid, coprolite - to be proudly displayed once more safely home.

Notes: Books such as John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman and Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed The World had made me curious about Lyme Regis and its Cobb. Plus, who could resist the allure of an hour or so of wandering under The Black Ven scavenging for fossils?!