Trips to the coast--Lyme Regis

England has beautiful coasts and beaches--we traveled to several. First to Lyme Regis on the southwest coast; then to Norfolk on the east coast; and a third trip to Orford on the North Sea.

For my birthday we went by train to Lyme Regis, going first to London, then to Axminster, then by taxi to Lyme Regis. I love British Rail; I always carry reading material but I am too mesmerized by this green and pleasant land to do anything but look out the window.

Nice view, leaving London for Axminster

That lovely rape flower that will turn into seed for oil begins in April--a lovely curry, saffron yellow.

Helen and I once tasted it and it tasted like my favorite mustard greens. Some people do not like the yellow rape as it is not native having only been grown in the last few decades. They prefer the soft green palate of the English countryside and findthe rape shocking.

One newspaper reported that the "green and pleasant land is turning a cheerful shade of yellow." And I love the "cheerful" color and believe it deepens the greens to almost blues. The new wheat is a dark emerald color but next to the rape and from a distance, it begins to take on a lovely deep blue-green color that I just want to fall into as it is so beautiful. Another time I saw a field filled with small magenta-colored flowers against a rape field--strikingly beautiful.

The hedgerows are greening up and blooming--the best hedgerow material is hawthorne because the branches bend easily and can be held down to form the foundation for the hedges, a complicated process. The hawthorne blooms in May, tiny blooms that look a little like blackberry blooms.

Some are white; some are pink.

The huge chestnut trees covered with their chandelier flowers are also both pink and white.

Sometimes,  we pass golden wheat fields recently harvested full of big black birds picking at the bits left.

We see animals living close to the road--beautiful cows and horses of all colors. The horses no longer wear their man-made coats. We pass pig farms where the pigs have their own little hovels to sleep in. We saw a geese farm with hundreds of geese milling around, looking very important!

 I am most interested in the sheep, especially the lambs. I always want to stop and hold one--I know from the experience of holding a brand new piglet that it would be hard as baby animals are strong and want to get back to their mommas. But they are all sizes, tiny babies as well as teenagers gamboling and frolicking around. Here is a lovely video called Lambs at Play

Lyme Regis, a small town on the Dorset coast, is an ancient place, used by Kings and soldiers and sailors, and by families for seaside air and swims and fossilizing, is breathtakingly beautiful!





Today is is protected as a World Heritage Site.

We stayed at the Lyme Townhouse. The manager, a retired chef who cooked tasty breakfasts--I chose heaps of smoked salmon and poached eggs every morning with toast and handmade marmalade. He recommended dinner at the Harbour Inn, which turned out to be rather nondescript but with excellent food--so good and fresh we ate there twice! I had plaice and mussels; Kevin had scallops and crab.  The house wine was French and also delicious.

The view from our window.

We enjoyed walking around this ancient  town.

We walked down Broad and then right onto the Beach Front or Sea Walk, past the site of the Lyme Regis' Assembly Rooms. There is a theatre  ("With the best view in UK") there now.

The Beach Front


Notice the row of pretty bath houses; local residents own them; visitors can rent them. They are used for changing and for tea parties. A fun arcade overlooks them.

Jane Austen came to Lyme Regis with her family twice and was enchanted, writing about it in a letter as well as featuring it in her last novel Persuasion where in a famous scene, a climactic scene,  Louisa Musgrave, jumps down on some stone stairs on the Cobb, falls and cracks her head. This accident gives Anne Eliot time with Captain Wentworth and they begin to realize their love for each other. Thus, bringing the right resolution to the novel.

The Cobb is a harbour wall made of local stone. On the Cobb are several stairs but no one knows for sure which ones Austen was thinking about. When Tennyson visited Lyme Regis, the first thing he wanted to do was the see the stairs where Louisa fell. This illustration from an early edition of an illustrated Persuasion shows the steps and the fall!


More recently the Cobb was used in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman. based on the book by John Fowles who lived in Lyme Regis. (His lovely house is now a rental property: Holiday at Belmont, Lyme Regis, Dorset)

It was a very windy day and I did not feel safe walking out on those slippery stones that make up the Cobb!


But the views were amazing! The view from the Cobb showing boats nestled in the cozy harbour.

Noisy Gulls!

Charmouth is another village (somewhere behind Kevin) that we walked to. We wanted to go at low tide by the water; however, there were so many warnings about cliffs falling that we decided to take the old road.

Not all the cliffs were blanketed in this protective wire.

It was up, up, up, but a good decision as we walked past beautiful countryside. I could not imagine anything I would rather be doing on my birthday than taking this walk.


 We looked back through the cemetery to Lyme Regis

I love the velvety texture of the new leaves.

We passed animals grazing.

Close up of the momma nursing!

And saw bluebells in bloom on the forest floor.

We took a short cut through a golf course. Imagine an American golf course inviting walkers through the course! We saw many friendly golfers out on this lovely day.

Interesting foot path on golf course made with shells

Austen in Persuasion described Charmouth, "with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more its sweet retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation...." We didn't walk far enough to to see this lovely place of contemplation, but we did have a delicious pub lunch.











The spiraling narrow road into the town passed lovely houses.






We asked a pedestrian about the local pubs. He suggested two and explained the difference. We chose the Royal Oak as it was the smaller and quieter.

One of the two rooms--we are in the reflection on the right. We were the first in but the pub began to fill up as the lunch customers came in.  We enjoyed delicious sandwiches.

Kevin had a brie and bacon sandwich.

We caught a local bus back. We were tired after the walk and wanted to get a rest (on the bus) in order to spend time at the excellent Lyme Regis Museum. Mary Anning may be the subject of the tongue twister, "She sells seashells by the sea shore." But it wasn't seashells she was selling but fossils.

Fossil collecting was hugely popular in the 19th century and Mary Anning's father had a business selling fossils at Lyme Regis. Mary took over after he died and she was known for finding fossils, including some of the early dinosaur bones --the Ichthyosaurs--and showing paleontologists how to find fossils. She took notes, wrote articles, and made the discovery that one of the most popular fossils was actually dung from big animals. These dung fossils were politely known as coprolites!

She was a smart woman, but poor and uneducated, and unrecognized for her many contributions to paleontology.  She is remembered in Lyme Regis.

We spent an entire afternoon at the delightful museum. It was run by John Fowles for many years.


There is a Jane Austen room about  as well as a Mary Anning room and a new Mary Anning wing is planned. One popular fossil that she collected and sold was ammonite and they are still found. The ammonite is a symbol for Lyme Regis--here shown on the walkway going into the museum.

This photo shows how pretty this museum is and there is a big ammonite in the niche in the wall.

The Lyme Regis street lights hang from ammonites!  Our favorite restaurant The Harbour Inn is on the right.

Below is William Buckland, an eccentric and interesting paleontologist famous for eating everything! He often fossiled with Mary Anning at Lyme Regis. He had a table made from Coprolites which actually look like insects and enjoyed telling admirers what the coprolites really were.

His coprolite table is on display!

In the Jane Austen room, I was fascinated by this cabinet which held her personal items including these little "abc" ivory tiles.  

Maybe Austen may be remembering these tiles when she wrote to her nephew Edward,

"What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour?"

Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra

 Just as we were leaving Lyme Regis, what should I see but Owens' and Hawkin's Iquanadon where the Fossil Feast was held on 31 December 1859 (see January 15)! I must return to this place.!