Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 August 2005 09:20:36
So, we're home and just about starting to catch up with ourselves again (before heading off to the frozen north on Friday!). It's been all go since we got home. First of all the friends who'd been here to housesit stayed a couple of extra nights so we could actually get to see them before their return home. Then another couple of friends arrived to spend three days and two nights with us on their touring holiday. Oh, and a service to take and the children to deliver to holiday club every morning this week - it's been a veritable excess of fun interspersed with mountains of washing!
The holiday was, as you've probably guessed from my previous post, an utter success. Apart from one slightly stressy day when I realised there was absolutely no way we could fit into our week all the things we each wanted to do AND get some relaxation as well! But a friend helped out by taking Smudgelet off for the day to the one place he was desperate to visit again and I really wanted a year off from!
Best day of the week, as agreed by all of us, was Friday when we made our way to Lyme Regis for the second time.... this time determined to arrive there in time to go on the fossil walk (as we had had a wonderful relaxing afternoon on the beach on Wednesday after arriving with only half an hour to have lunch and find the starting point for the fossil walk). It was led by Dr Colin Dawes, your real archetypal palaentologist (however you spell it) who was so bubbling with enthusiasm for his subject that it was impossible not to get drawn in. Tiddles was in his element.. and the two of them (Dr Dawes and Tiddles) were inseperable as they huddled over a pile of rocks, fossil hammer at the ready, as if the rest of the world were a mere inconvenience. And what was amazing was how easy it was! We collected so many fossils that I had to sacrifice Tiddles' new school rucksack to carry them all home.
I think my favourite find was two 200,000,000 year old scalloped shells which were first fossilised and then gained a coating of iron pyrites which outlined each of the raised ridges along the top of the shell in gold, leaving the lower layers black, though I also found loads of amonites or all shapes and sizes, including a fairly rare one. Tiddles found a host of belamites (?) too, including a fairly rare complete one, while Smudgelet was more captivated by the abundance of crystals of all shapes and sizes and was most disappointed when I declined to carry half a dozen huge rocks home. Dr Dawes came to the rescue with his fossil hammer, much to Smudgelet's delight... especially as he'd nearly spent all his pocket money on fools gold in the fossil shop before we set out and here he was with a bagful of it for free!