London 2023 - Day 5

In the morning we got up and drove to the small town of Charmouth to meet our guide from Jurassic Coast Guides for a private fossil walk on the beach there. When James was younger, he had wanted to be a paleontologist and find dinosaur fossils. He grew out of that but we had looked up places in the world where you could find or see these fossils. I didn't think it would be very likely that we made it to the Dinosaur fossil national park out west in the US and even less likely that we would make it to England! But here we were & all our shark tooth hunting experience came in handy to find these fossils.

The countryside on the way to Charmouth was beautiful, despite the roadways being narrow and a little scary.

We finally saw the coast after coming up over the hill. I guess the elevation all went down towards the coastline so it seemed like it came out of no where.

Here we are with our guide after our lesson on how to spot the fossils as we walked on the beach (and not in any mudslides!).

Hayden found the first ammonite fossil!!

Here is a limestone rock that our guide broke open to see if any ammonites were inside - there was one! We kept this and brought it home.

Family picture with our fossils on the beach!

They say all these fossils are located here because the hills are made up of old ocean floor from long ago. When it rains really hard, which happens here often, the mudslides down the cliff and gets washed out by the ocean. The ocean tides are what wash up the fossils and leave them on the shore after freeing them from the mud. Pretty amazing - they don't come in with the tide because of the tide pulling them from the ocean, but from the tide washing them out of the mud on the beach already.

We drove around the shore line and stopped at a cute little place for lunch and another view of the ocean. We had an uneventful ride back to London after our lunch, and we were all glad to be back to 'our' little flat. I celebrated with some coffee and biscuits while the kitchen window was open. Matt and I enjoyed the sunset, and then I counted out all our fossils! We brought home lots of rocks, haha.

What an incredible experience fossil hunting off the southern coast of England! Thank you Lord for the opportunity to make another dream into reality.