Tuesday is fossil hunting day at Charmouth just along the coast from Lyme Regis. We picked this place because it is home of the Fossil Heritage Centre and they claim that fossils are found every day so that sounded fine. We hired two geological for £3 each and Al and I set forth to find a haul by hammering to death some of the billions of rocks on the beach. Penny and Sue meanwhile scoured all the pebbles on the beach looking for those elusive curly patterns. After a couple of hours with a rain and coffee break we had exactly nothing apart from sore arms and broken rocks all around. We called it a day by walking up the beach back to the car park, then by all that's holy I spotted a small round disk on the ground turned it over and there it was, a fossil. wahoooo! Turns out it is iron pyrite and according to the fossil shop worth a pound but a genuine one.

By this time the weather had turned really rainey and after a quick drive through Lyme Regis, a nice looking town but wet, we headed back to the town house. Just a quick word on the town house, it was one of a group that was built especially for the London Olympics, the rowing competitions were held in Weymouth/Portland, our particular one housed the New Zealand and Cook Islands team.

The weather at the moment is very very changeable by the time we got back to Portland the sun was out and stayed out until a spectacular sunset.

We went back into Weymouth for dinner and a walk around. On the Esplanade is a memorial to the WWI ANZACS, the story behind this we learnt at Nothefort yesterday. There were many casualties amongst the ANZACS and it was decided to send them to Weymouth to recover, there was so many of them that they had to build new barracks to hold them all, they were there for quite a while and it is said that there were hundreds of Weymouth girls who made the long journey to Australia as war brides.

Day 47 - Tuesday - Fossil Hunting on the Jurassic Coast