Agesalmost As Old As Time Itself, the West Dorset Coastline Tells Many

EXPLORING BRITAIN’ S COASTLINE H ERE MAY BE DAYS when, standing on the beach at TCharmouth, in the shadow of the cliffs behind, with the spray crashing against the shore and the wind whistling past your ears, it is ROCKS OF hard to imagine the place as it was 195 million years ago.The area was Almost as old as time itself, the west a tropical sea back then, teeming with strange and wonderful creatures. It is Dorset coastline tells many stories. a difficult concept to get your head around but the evidence lies around Robert Yarham and photographer Kim your feet and in the crumbling soft mud and clay face of the cliffs. AGES Disturbed by the erosion caused by Sayer uncover just a few of them. the spray and wind, hundreds of small – and very occasionally, large – fossils turn up here.The most common fossils that passers-by can encounter are ammonites (the curly ones), belemnites (the pointy ones); and, rarely, a few rarities surface, such as ABOVE Locals and tourists alike head for the beaches by Charmouth, where today’s catch is a good deal less intimidating than the creatures that swam the local seas millions of years ago. MAIN PICTURE The layers of sand deposited by the ancient oceans can be clearly seen in the great cliffs of Thorncombe Beacon (left) and West Cliff, near Bridport. A37 A35 A352 Bridport A35 Dorchester Charmouth A354 Lyme Regis Golden Cap Abbotsbury Osmington Mills Swannery Ringstead Bay The Fleet Weymouth Chesil Beach Portland Harbour Portland Castle orth S N I L 10 Miles L Isle of Portland O H D I V A The Bill D icthyosaurs or plesiosaurs – huge, cottages attract hordes of summer predatory, fish-like reptiles that swam visitors.They are drawn by the the ancient seas about 200 million picturesque setting and the famous years ago during the Jurassic period. ‘Cobb’, the protective stone harbour It was the fossilized remains of these wall immortalized in Jane Austen’s animals that made the name of local Persuasion and John Fowles’s The woman Mary Anning, a native of French Lieutenant’s Woman. ABOVE The Cobb at Lyme Regis, made famous by nearby Lyme Regis. She was just 12 South of Charmouth is the Golden novelists Jane Austen and John Fowles, is a Grade years old when, in 1811, and having Cap, a soaring outcrop named for its I listed structure. only recently lost her father, she and distinctively coloured greensand rock ABOVE RIGHT The bustling harbour at Lyme can her brother discovered the very first (which is yellow when first exposed) be as busy in the summer as the pretty streets. icthyosaur skeleton. Mary’s skill and and the highest point on the British hard work during her life resulted in south coast at 626 ft.The cliff-top LEFT Seatown Beach and Golden Cap.The green many other scientifically important walks here are hazardous, with some deposits lower down the crumbling cliffs are a finds, which were sought after by sections of the coastal path now closed perfect but dangerous place to find fossils. scientists, museums and private as a result of erosion. collectors, and provided her family Following the coast to the south- with an income. Mary’s finds also east, past the once-prosperous GHOSTS OF THE PAST contributed to the reputation of the ship-building West Bay – now fighting ossils are not the actual remains of area as a rich source of geological back the advances of the sea – and past the organisms they record.When a information about the planet’s past. the pretty village of Burton Bradstock, F creature perishes in the sea or sand, its soft Now called the ‘Jurassic coast’, the brings you to Chesil Beach.The beach tissue decays but the harder tissue – such as series of rocky shorelines that stretch is a 17-mile-long shingle bank – a bone or shell – is compressed by the sand, from Exmouth in Devon, to the east, massive dyke of pebbles, protecting the soil or clay laid down by the sea.With each all the way to the Old Harry Rocks, Fleet lagoon to the east from the fresh layer of sand, the weight of the new to the west, still draws many visitors pounding of the sea.The ‘great beach’, layers build up and tiny particles of minerals in search of history, and prehistory. as Chesil bank is known locally, has are forced into the cells of the hard tissue. All along, the exposed layers of ancient been here for about 7000 years. It is Eventually, the tissue does decay completely, soil, sand, clay and rock relate the story believed that it was created after the but the pressurized mineral particles harden of the coastline. So important to world last Ice Age, when the melting glaciers in the form of the cells, which have acted geological study are these coastal forms caused the sea to rise and gradually like moulds, replicating their shapes.And so that the area has been designated a collect the falling rock debris from the the forms of the bones and shells are World Heritage Site. Devon and west Dorset shores to the preserved as fossils. It is best to look for Mary Anning lived in Lyme Regis, north-west. Longshore drift carried, fossils on the beaches, as the constantly- which could be considered the capital and still carries, the pebbles eastwards eroded cliffs are hazardous and prone of the ‘Jurassic coast’, a sort of fossil – a barely perceptible but significant to rock-falls. theme park.The most westerly town half-an-inch each year. As you walk in Dorset, Lyme’s elegant Georgian along the beach you may notice that 34 35 4 4 EXPLORING BRITAIN’ S COASTLINE ABOVE Colourful Looking north-west cottages in Bridport. from Verne Hill, along the huge shingle bank RIGHT A prototype of Chesil Beach which of the Barnes Wallis shelters the Fleet bouncing bomb, fished lagoon, at the top from the Fleet lagoon. right and centre of FAR RIGHT Erected the picture. on the beach in 1887 to mark the 50th year of Queen Victoria’s reign,Weymouth’s Jubilee Clock is now surrounded by the later Esplanade. the pebbles decrease substantially in – including fossilized shark’s teeth – by Chesil Beach. Driving south, the size the further east you walk. No one that visitors can pick up and examine gateway to the Isle is an uninspiring appears to have adequately explained in an engagingly interactive way. road from Chesil, passing the huge oil this, although it is said that smugglers At the northern end of the Fleet is terminal and Royal Navy base to the pulling their boats onto the shore a more obvious kind of local wildlife. east.The massive harbour here has had under the cover of darkness were able Hundreds of brilliant white swans important military connections ever to tell where they had landed just by congregate at Abbotsbury swannery. since the times of Henry VIII, who feeling the size of the pebbles. The swans were once bred to feed built Portland Castle to guard the bay. The Fleet lagoon itself is a haven for monks at the local Abbey, but they are As the road winds up from the beach, underwater wildlife.The Chesil Beach now protected and are the world’s up Verne Hill, it passes through Centre occupies a long black hut at only managed nesting colony of swans. Fortuneswell with its motley collection the southern end of the lagoon and Amongst the majesty of the birds, an of buildings, some run-down, most introduces you to the wealth of incongruous sight greets you as you recalling the styles of Portland’s boom- submarine life that lurks in the Fleet’s walk around the swannery: a prototype time in the Victorian era. murky, but species-rich, depths. A TV of Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb Pausing at the top of Verne Hill and monitor linked up to an underwater from the Second World War. Looking looking north rewards the traveller closed-circuit camera provides visitors for all the world like a huge black golf with a view of the key features of the with a glimpse of this otherwise ball, it was recovered from the lagoon. coast.To the north-west, the slim, hidden world. Fish swim in and out The Fleet was used for testing stony line of Chesil Beach stretches of shot amongst the waving seaweed. prototypes of the bomb. away towards Golden Cap and The information centre also provides The Isle of Portland juts south from beyond.To the east,the other side of a small insight into the history and the Fleet, five miles into the English Portland harbour, lies the sprawling wildlife of the area. Lying around the Channel.The Isle is not an island at all, seaside town of Weymouth, made room is a bewildering array of objects but a peninsula joined to the mainland fashionable by George III’s summer 36 BEAUTIFUL BRITAIn / SPRING 2008 4 visits at the end of the 18th century, and still a popular tourist resort. Portland stone has been a sought- after building material for centuries. The Romans quarried here and some of Britain’s great buildings, including Buckingham Palace and Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, owe their strong but elegantly pale appearance to the local white stone.Today, Portland is pockmarked with small indentations and great amphitheatres in the ground ABOVE The waves have another go at unseating species, and butterflies. Once out on directions, in what is called ‘the race’.

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