Not only do we like to visit seaside towns and cities when we’re exploring parts of the United Kingdom, but we also like to visit seaside towns and cities out of tourist season, an effect of not liking people in general and disliking children in particular. Thus it was in late 2014 that we decided to head along the coast to the west of home for a few days, a trip that would see us based near Exeter, and with hotels not wanting guests turning up too early we broke up our drive from Portsmouth with a stop along the way in the Dorset town of Lyme Regis as we’d never been before.
Lyme Regis is famous for its fossils that are often exposed in landslides along the coastline near it. The town was the birthplace of Mary Anning, a heavy influencer of scientific thinking in the fields of palaeontology and geology who, because she was a woman, was not eligible to join the Geological Society and often was not credited as well as she might have for her work. She was well-regarded by her male peers, though, and she made important discoveries such as the fossilised remains of an ichthyosaur, two nearly complete plesiosaurs, and the first set of pterosaur bones found outside Germany.
We would visit the museum at Lyme Regis, located on the site of Mary Anning’s birthplace, but first off we wanted to take a walk along the seafront. Despite the cold. Despite the high winds. Knowing us, it was probably because of those things. We had a choice to make from where we emerged at the shore after our walk through the town from the car park: west towards the beach and harbour wall; or east along the sea defences towards the Dorset cliffs. Both had merits but we opted for the latter on this occasion.
Our seafront walk initially took us past some older stone structures and even a part of a wall that appeared to be miniature fortifications with a small tower of some kind and for some odd purpose. The local football team play at Davey Fort Ground whose name might explain the history of the walls but I’m only guessing here. One thing that was evident, however, was just why there were so many landslides along this part of the coast as the water, churned up and turned over by the powerful wave surges, was as brown as the soil and sand it was eroding right before our eyes.
A sign on a wall we passed promoted the friendship between that local football team and one in Normandy. Lyme Regis is also notably twinned with St George’s, the capital of Bermuda, on account of the island’s founder being Sir George Somers, a renowned sixteenth century privateer and former MP of the Dorset town.
The east coast of Lyme Regis was a vista of cliffs around a curving bay with a modern sea wall protecting the town as best it could from the battering it was receiving – and clearly often receives – from the wind and sea funnelling into the spot along the shoreline. With the geology of the region accounting for its abundance of fossils and the geography of the region delivering up striking demonstrations of raw power from the elements it would be fair to say that Lyme Regis is a great destination for nature lovers. We wandered along the top of the sea defences for a while, marvelling at the pounding from offshore, and braving the wind until such time as fingers and faces started to edge towards the painful side of numb.
That brought the walk along the sea wall to an end as far as we were concerned so we turned around and headed back towards the main part of Lyme Regis. I noticed and approved of the big variety in house designs along the seafront and it was interesting to see some fossils – ammonites, mainly – embedded in some of the walls we passed. Any seaside resort in the UK worth its salt has colourful beach huts and Lyme Regis is no exception there either. We walked to within range of the harbour wall and breakwater jutting out to sea from the shore, but decided not to head onto it at this time (despite our love of piers and similar structures) as we wanted to pay a visit to the museum, fancied a bite to eat, and were in need of restrooms at this point (a biting wind and crashing waves can have that effect).
Tea and cake inside us (that’s what you do when you’re beside the seaside) and a little knowledge injected into our cranial cavities later we made our way back to the car in order to continue onwards to our hotel in Devon. But our visit to Lyme Regis doesn’t quite end here.
The thing about a journey long enough to warrant a stop on the way is that the same journey in reverse is likely long enough to warrant a stop on the return, and this is precisely what happened at the conclusion of our 2014 West Country holiday. We decided to head back to Lyme Regis just a few days later not because we’re getting senile and had forgotten we’d already visited, but because as we’d left the town we’d spotted an interesting-looking art gallery which was sadly closed. But we’d paid attention to its opening times, and realising that those coincided with our trek back towards Hampshire we hit the seaside town once more.
The weather was not quite so clear and bright on this occasion (an understatement) but that didn’t stop us from making immediately for the seafront of Lyme Regis once more. This time we took a walk westwards and made for The Cobb since we’d not ventured onto it just a few days earlier. This harbour wall is mentioned in documents dating from the early fourteenth century. Until the nineteenth century Lyme Regis was able to function as a fair-sized trading port thanks to this artificial harbour but the increasing size of ships soon relegated it to a smaller role. The Cobb is also mentioned in both Jane Austen’s Persuasion and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The heavy cloud cover and low tide exposing muddy sand and beached boats lent this Dorset town a delightful gloom.
Coming back from The Cobb towards land I was taken by some of the patterns left in the sand by the receding water. One of the shots I took could almost be an orbital photo over Mars.
The next thing to catch my eye on the walk back into town was the sight of a group of (I assume) photography or art students on Lyme Regis beach trying to take some leaping photos against the sea and cloudy skies. The wind was not making this an easy job but it looked like they were enjoying themselves and it made for interesting viewing from our vantage point back from the water.
All that remained was to head into town and to the art gallery. A few more pictures were taken because if it’s not clear by now, taking photos is what I do.
The art gallery we’d spotted on our previous trip was BizleyArt. We popped in and saw the artist painting while we were there, and after a bit of dithering and an embarrassing moment when I turned my back on the artist to point out what we were interested in, forgetting he was deaf and now unable to hear anything I was saying nor read my lips, we picked up something with which to decorate the home. Richard Bizley is heavily influenced by science and nature in his artwork and Lyme Regis’s connections with prehistory feature often in his works, but it was a piece called Enceladus Expedition that caught our eye as it combined sci-fi with a cartoon style that appealed to that part of us that likes street art and pop art.
Lyme Regis has some nice beachfront and lovely views and there’s plenty to potentially discover if you’ve got an interest in geology or prehistory. We obviously saw enough on our first visit to visit again, so as a day trip it gets our thumbs up but it’s not the sort of place we’d use as a base for an extended stay as it doesn’t quite have that liveliness for the evening we look for.