Stanley's pictures: Day 1, We Are Back!,

after spending a couple of days in Charmouth and Weymouth,

first a bit of bad news Diana had a works outing for a game of Crazy Golf followed by a meal in the evening, which I was going to post photographs of, but Diana dropped her telephone with all of the photographs on, you may remember this is the one that we were quoted £280 to repair, so we have been looking for a replacement, the problem being both of the the O2 shops we had been to did not have the S21 that Diana wanted, but more of that later, so for now Diana had to use my telephone, so on to the first part of our trip,

it was a glorious day,

in the distance the sea,

hardly any traffic, the Jag just ate up the miles,

and here we are at Charmouth, we are actually staying in Weymouth, but as we can not book in until the afternoon,

we thought would spend some time fossil hunting on this part of the Jurassic Coast,

we will be walking to the second to last slope in the distance,

but first a coffee and a bite to eat,

whilst Diana bought the food and drink I took a couple of photographs, this one with the café behind us looking to the west,

and to the east,

belt on,

trowel in hand, all set,

except a bacon bap,

and a coffee each,

if you ever do decided to visit Charmouth, this is a place that is so interesting, the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre, entry to the centre is free, if you are into fossils there really is so much to see inside, including the ichthyosaur that starred in the BBC documentary ‘Attenborough and the Sea Dragon’ which is on display at the Centre,

coffee finished, a walk to the bridge,

over the River Char, if you look carefully you will see some people in the far distance,

I have zoomed in, the people are where the fossils start appearing, we will be walking past them to the next part of the cliff that reaches the sea,

as you can see from the long shadows it is still early,

as it happens low tide starts from 11.00 in the morning, and it is safe to hunt for fossils until 14.00 in the afternoon, so we planned the day just right!

looking up the fast emptying River Char,

and out to sea,

the car park already far behind us,

a lot of people have been here before,

so it is slim pickings,

we have only been looking of 10 minutes,

and my back is not liking it at all!

I found a lot of maybes, but nothing of interest so far, so brush the sand off of my fingers,

never give up!

never surrender!

and then,

one maybe and one definite both together,

although difficult to see the piece of iron pyrite on my fingers looks like a part of an ammonite,

the one in my palm is defiantly a pyrite ammonite, the fossils in this area are turned in to iron pyrites, sometimes known as fools gold, which is why it has a slightly gold metallic look about it,

30 or so feet away I spotted this,

a second ammonite,

so now we had two,

but then our luck ran out,

try as we might,

we could not find another whole ammonite, lots cemented together, but no more complete individuals,

I think a few people on the beach had backache the same as myself!

I wandered down to the tide line,

but still nothing,

a change of tactics,

I went up to the cliff edge,

you just have to be aware of the fact that the cliff could move at anytime,

a little success, a belemnite, which were marine animals belonging to the phylum Mollusca and the class Cephalopoda. Their closest living relatives are squid and cuttlefish, they had a squid-like body but, unlike modern squid, they had a hard internal skeleton, and it is this that I have found, in the animal’s tail, the skeleton formed a bullet-shaped feature sometimes referred to as a guard, but more correctly termed a rostrum (plural: rostra),

reconstruction of a ‘living’ belemnite. BGS © UKRI. these are the parts that are normally found as fossils, as it happens I found a few others, once the blog is up to date I will post a photograph of the days haul,

I also found a few more bits of ammonites,

next a look amongst the rocks,

with little luck,

we carried on walking,

still along way to go,

Diana takes the pose,

as did I, after a few more hours by now it was time to retrace our steps back to the car and drive to Weymouth to check in,

a quick soda at one of the sea side cafés, it was thirsty work, walking along the sand,

we went back past the sign by the bridge,

and in to the car where we had a couple of coffees and Diana had a genuine Dorset cake,

we were soon headed for our hotel,

in the distances,

the famous Chesil Beach,

the beach is one of three major shingle beach structures in Britain. Its name is derived from the Old English ceosel or cisel, meaning "gravel" or "shingle". It runs for a length of 29 kilometres from West Bay to the Isle of Portland and in places is up to 15 metres high and 200 metres,

we arrived at out hotel,

The Crown Hotel, to give it it's proper name,

check in completed,

it was time for a pre-evening meal walk,

as you might expect with any costal town in the UK with a fishing/military history, there are a lot of pubs!

and in Weymouth lots of boats, working ones and some for leisure,

this one a commercial fishing vessel,

opposite a pub and restaurant,

also a few coffee shops,

we made our way to our restaurant for the evening,

the Weymouth Tandoori,

the restaurant had an aquarium, so it had my vote!

all settled in,

'Cheers!',

a few poppadoms to start,

Diana decide on a mixed tikka,

a prawn puri for myself, and I have to say it was one of the nicest ones I have eaten since we returned from Thailand, is was so delicious,

so I had to have another 'Cheers!, to celibate!

this is something we have not seen for many years, a dish warmer,

when Diana first visited England some 12 or more years ago, every Indian restaurant had these,

our meal arrived Diana chose a lamb dish, I went with a chicken one, both of which we had not tried before, plus vegetables and mushroom rice,

the meal was a resounding success, the food so nice and the portions were huge, in fact if we had ordered just one main dish and shared it, that would have been enough for both of us,