Taking our motorhome to Charmouth to do some fossil hunting

 To help you navigate our blog more easily - this link - https://wherenexthun.blogspot.com/2025/06/how-to-navigate-our-blog.html will take you to a summary page detailing all our blog posts. Clicking on a link will open that post in a new browser window. To return to the home current page just close the browser page and return to the post you were reading beforehand.  

 Impulsivity

Impulsivity. Occasionally it’s a good thing to have.

On Saturday 29^th we decided that maybe a quick trip in Bryony was on the books. The UK was about to enter a period of dry sunny weather. On Sunday 30^th  March, decision made – off to Charmouth to do some fossil hunting and to catch up with some old friends. Bryony was filled with water and packed up, and, for the first time, we opted not to take the e-bikes. Instead we decided we’d take ‘Zippy’ with us, our small i10.

My undergraduate subsidiary subject was geology! Specialising in Palaeontology! 

Monday 31^st March to Friday 4^th April 2025  four nights away at Charmouth.

Monday. Away from storage site by 0930 and coffee stop at top of Halden Hill just outside Exeter by 1030. Easy run along the A35 to Seadown Touring Park. £31 a night so a tad pricey but with lovely, spacious and level gravel pitches, very clean facilities, a warm welcome and lovely landscaping down by the river which runs through the park. It is a 2-minute walk down to the beach and the location is perfect. Worth the money!

And lovely clear skies! So great stargazing potential. Better still – minimal lighting around the site – so even better!

By 2pm we are down on the east beach walking the tide line looking for ammonites. It is breezy and you need to keep a wary eye on the waves. Crunching pea gravel; surging suds of the white water at the top of the beach as a wave recedes. Plenty of belemnites but no ammonites. We need to get our eye in! Back at the little museum, we stop for an ice cream and sit on the stepped beach defences admiring the views westwards to Lyme Regis.

Chilled perfection! Bonus, the fridge seems to be working again on hook up. So, the team at Devon and Cornwall Motorhomes did a good job last week!

Tuesday 1^st April

We drive to Lyme Regis. It takes ten minutes. Last time we did this on e-bikes and it took substantially longer; in driving rain and miserable conditions. Using ‘Zippy’ is a revelation and we tentatively discuss A frames and towing him more often on short hop destinations around the UK. We browse the shops, stop for coffee, walk the seafront and go out onto the Cobb.

What’s with the elephants? They are everywhere along the sea front and in the town. Resin, about 1.4m high on a plinth, they are multi-coloured and show all sorts of designs, from star charts to bright flowers, from micro plankton to an admiral’s uniform. Apparently there is an ‘elephant trail’ along the Jurassic coast – great idea!  

The afternoon? We walk down from the site and out onto west beach this time and stroll the beach once more. More belemnites but no ammonites. This fossil hunting malarkey is a tough gig.

The evening is spent over at friends who live in the area; an evening meal and plenty of catch-up chatter. I try stargazing that night but a catastrophic power failure on my power station puts paid to that. Dark sky, clear conditions, minimal light pollution. I’m infuriated and gutted in equal measure.

 

Wednesday 2^nd April

We stroll around Bridport. We are beginning to like this ‘drive to destination’ lifestyle! It was a good call bringing ‘Zippy’.  The town is a typical market town with two main streets and an eclectic range of shops, including some second-hand book shops!! Antique shops, art galleries, we like Bridport! And, of course, more elephants!

More coffee and then back to Bryony at Seadown. Down to the beach and this time back along the east beach. The tide is just going out and we stroll the line between shingle and sand. Lots of belemnites and at last three ammonites. Tiny but prized; iron pyritised, so they glisten!

Our friends join us for tea in Bryony. The site has a pizza lorry every Wednesday. Cooked to order in a proper pizza oven. Not a huge choice but really tasty. Three 12” pizza for £30. An evening of chatter and laughter, story swapping and then a dusk time stroll around the site looking at the range of motorhomes stopped here. Our friends are thinking of getting a second-hand motorhome so the discussions were detailed and they left with much to think about (their words).

Thursday 3^rd  April

I left Bryony at 0230. The problem with a shingle hardstanding is it doesn’t half crunch at night; and Bryony’s habitation door has to be ‘slammed’ shut. There is, frankly, no quiet exit and so I pray that all are soundly asleep in neighbouring vans.

It is cold and there is a brisk north easterly wind. Very clear night, lots of stars above. Eyes adjusted to nightscape, I stroll down through the field to the beach where I stop to take photos of the bridge crossing the closed off river. Then its out onto the beach.

It isn’t until I take my first photo of the milky way, looking east along the length of the beach that I realise how much light pollution there is from Bridport and West Bay. My photos have a horrendous tangerine glow which will need considerable post editing and white balance adjusting.

I spend an hour getting photos and trudge back to Bryony around 0415.

The sensible morning is spent visiting West Bay. One of us plays the role of a ‘Broadchurch’ groupie, taking photos of the house by the river; the house on the hill; the police station – supposedly. The other one in the partnership won’t stoop that low!

Coffee and a browse of shops and galleries. Back to Bryony, lunch and yes, back down to the beach for another afternoon of fossil hunting. East beach as before. This is the joy of Seadown. It is a five-minute walk to the beach, through a private gate at the end of the large field. The river runs down through it with extensive reed beds and plenty of wild fowl to see.

Back on the east beach in the afternoon; a stiff chilly breeze. The weather has grown cloudy and rain is forecast. We find more belemnites and one small ammonite. There is clearly a knack to fossil hunting here. We watch battle hardener fossliers pass us armed with geological hammers and cold chisels. Some carry a narrow spade affair and some even have silver large sieves. They rush off into the distance towards one of the very large winter cliff falls which has spilled across the upper beach over a mile and a half away from the access point.

We shuffle the tide line and where pea gravel merges to sand. You have to train your eye to look for pointy shapes (belemnites) and round flat stones (ammonites). The colour grey or glistening gold. Ignore anything else!

We last an hour. Its way too cold and the breeze is turning into a stiff wind. We beat a hasty retreat back to Bryony for tea and garibaldi biscuits. Someone forgot (again) the fire stick, so its watching ‘Designated Survivor’ on the laptop (again!). Yes! It was me who forgot, again!!

 

Friday 4^th April

It always surprises us how quickly we can pack up. But today is not one of those days. From getting out of bed to driving over the grey waste guttering – a leisurely hour and a half. But we are still away by 0900.  Straight back down the A35, M5 and A38. A stop off at Exeter services for coffee. One of us, and it wasn’t me, mistakes a coach parking sign for ‘a motorhome with a disposal point’ and so sends me off on a fruitless search for a black waste point. Two things became clear during this time. Firstly, I found the sign and it looked nothing like the continental sign or the ‘search4sites’ sign for a disposal point! And secondly, it’s a UK service station – I should have known better! Silly me!

We have a routine on a return trip home. We get rid of black and grey waste at the site and drain off most of the freshwater tank. When we get home, outside the house, on the road, we do the frost dump value to empty the water heater tank and it flows into the road drain by the house. We had already packed everything in the motorhome back into IKEA bags so it was just a matter of carrying everything back into the house. And then its five minutes down the road to the storage site.

Easy peasy!

Costs for this trip:

Diesel: £30 top up

Site costs: £124

Extra food costs: £30 for pizzas

Tota costs for this trip: £184 or £36 approx per day