Lyle on the Jurassic Coast, Post #2

I’m a little behind on the blog, as the first one took me longer than I expected to write due to traveling and spotty WiFi while on the Jurassic Coast. However, I’m currently on the train to Oxford and excited to look back on my past few days on the Jurassic Coast!

            After leaving London, I went straight by train and then bus to a town on the Jurassic Coast called Lyme Regis. The birthplace and lifelong home of Mary Anning, this town and nearby Charmouth are famous for the fantastic fossil hunting that their beaches provide. By the time I got there, the town museum was closed and the tide was in, keeping me from walking along the beach towards Charmouth, so I decided to amble through town. It was a wonderfully quaint place, with fossil shops, beachside restaurants and ice cream parlors, narrow streets with beach cottages, and a small river flanked by greenery running through the town. I got myself some fish and chips and sat on the beach watching the sunset and the groups of families enjoying themselves on the shore. While I only live a few hours from the Gulf of Mexico, I go to the Texas coast maybe a couple times a year at most, so seeing the ocean is a treat. I was struck by how stunning it was—I knew that the English coast was beautiful, but I still was unsure of what to expect. Looking out over the ocean towards the curve of the coast line and the towering hills above Charmouth (where I was planning to hike the next day) was a wonderfully calming way to spend the evening.

Lyme Regis

They do say that art imitates nature-- and this artfully made fried fish looked just like the Golden Cap and cliffs near Charmouth

            The next morning, after a chat with my very friendly and talkative bed and breakfast host, I went over to the Lyme Regis Museum right when it opened. I was expecting a small local history museum, and was taken aback by how large the museum was on the inside, and by how detailed its exhibits were. There were multiple sections about Lyme Regis’ history, dating back to Roman period and Iron Age and going through the present. The exhibits featured the economy of Lyme Regis (shipping and then tourism), its part during various periods of war, and its literary significance (it’s the setting of multiple novels, including Jane Austen’s Persuasion). However, due to the my bus schedule, I couldn’t spend as much time in these parts of the museum as I would have liked to. Instead, I focused on their large room dedicated to the history of the Jurassic Coast and of Mary Anning (on the site of whose home the museum now sits). This “Mary Anning Wing” was established in 2017 and dedicated by David Attenborough, whose voice was included in part of the exhibit (the same voice that has narrated umpteen nature documentaries and that truly every environmentalist wants to narrate their life). I was enormously impressed with this exhibit—it was a fantastic combination of a classic museum exhibit (similar to the Fossil Marine Reptiles gallery at the Natural History Museum) with more modern features, including electronic interactive displays. The exhibit outlined Anning’s life story, starting from childhood events like fossil hunting with her father and surviving a lightning strike all the way up to her death from cancer at age 47. By including information about her financial struggles, letters she wrote about her discoveries, her frustrations about her lack of recognition by the scientific community, and her book of poems and sayings that she wrote down for her own use, the exhibit gave a much deeper insight into not only Anning’s accomplishments, but also her daily routine, her character, and her personal beliefs.

The museum also did a good job of outlining Anning’s interactions with other geologists, providing greater context to visitors about the study of geology in England during this time and the major geological figures with whom Anning was working. The exhibit had rows of drawers that, when pulled out, revealed a screen inside containing information. While this system did make it difficult for multiple visitors to look at the contents of drawers that may be stacked on top of one another, it was a creative way of fitting a lot of information into the relatively small space of the room. Because of this smart use of space, the museum was able to include drawers with information about multiple important geologic figures, including Conybeare; Buckland; Thomas Birch, who sold his own fossil collection and gave some of the proceeds to the Anning family to help with their financial struggles; Louis Aggasiz, the namesake of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and the only contemporary of Anning’s to actually cite her work in a scientific paper; and Henry de la Beche, a childhood friend of Anning’s who not only created the Duria Antiquior, a watercolor print imagining what the creatures Anning was discovering would have looked like, in order to raise money for her family, but also delivered a tribute to her at a meeting of the Geological Society after her death. Other people highlighted in the exhibit included the Philpot sisters, whom I did not know about beforehand. According to the information at the museum, they were a trio of unmarried sisters who lived in Lyme Regis and were friends with Anning; they not only amassed a large fossil collection themselves, but also encouraged Anning, who had no formal education herself, to study geology more closely and read scientific papers.

This exhibit took great efforts to spotlight not only Anning and other contemporaneous geologists, but also the various theories being discussed at the time by people in the nineteenth century scientific circles. It also included clear general information about the ancient creatures and geologic history of the area, specifically the Jurassic ocean that led to the formation of some of the types of rocks near Lyme Regis and the deposition of these reptile fossils. Altogether, the mixture of general geologic and paleontological history of the area with the human historical context of how this past was realized created an exhibit that I thought left the visitor with a good understanding of both natural history and cultural context.

The entrance to the museum decorated with ammonite imprints

Some of the drawers in the museum. Each one had an electronic screen or other information inside of it.

An image, placed at child's height in the museum, of Henry de la Beche's Duria Antiquior

A modern interpretation of the Duria Antiquior, based off of more recent research and knowledge

An image of a letter written by Mary Anning

After visiting the museum, I walked along the beach to the nearby town of Charmouth. It was raining slightly, but that didn’t stop large groups of people from being out on the beach with guides, looking for fossils. I had read that this area was good for fossil hunting still and knew that there were services offering guided fossil hunts, but I was skeptical—had the beaches not already been picked over by such a large number of tourists over 200 years? That was until I found a fossil myself! It was an ammonite (shelled creature eaten by plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs) just on the ground as I was walking over the rocky area of the beach. The shell had collapsed a bit so it wasn’t extremely pronounced, but still exciting. There were others around me with hammers breaking into different rocks to expose the ammonites within. It was great to see the younger kids, especially, eagerly running up to their parents or a guide to ask about their finds.

Fossil hunting on the way to Charmouth

My ammonite find!

After reaching Charmouth, I took a bus to another town to go from there up to Golden Cap, one of the tallest points on the Jurassic Coast. I love to hike, and was excited to be able to work a fair amount of hiking into this part of my trip. By this point it was raining very hard, so my entire hike was quite muddy; however, it was a warm rain so it wasn’t too uncomfortable. While I grew up in rural Texas and am used to seeing agricultural land, most of the places I’ve gone “hiking” have been forested, or just generally not agricultural land, so it was amusing for me to be walking through cow and sheep pastures along the trail towards the top of the cliff. While somewhat unclear due to the rain, the view at the top was a panoramic look at the Atlantic in front, pastures behind, and colorful cliffs going out in either direction. The rainclouds also left the entire area with a dramatic gray coloring, which gave it a unique raw and grand beauty. My first hike of the trip was definitely a memorable one!

The view from the top of Golden Cap, the highest point on England's southern coast

I went from there via bus further along the coast to see the cliffs at West Bay. I stopped at the visitor center there beforehand, which had some helpful information about the types of rocks in the cliffs and how they were formed in a Jurassic ocean millions of years ago. Additionally, I was able to see the remains of a relatively recent (from the past few years) rockslide, an image of the constant erosion of the coast that is dangerous at times, but can also expose fossils and lead to important scientific discoveries.

The cliffs at West Bay

After spending that night in Weymouth, a relatively larger coastal town, I went the next day to see Lulworth Cove and the Durdle Door. These are two of the most famous geological formations on the coast, and the site of many a school and family trip for those in the area. It was quite crowded—there were tons of families, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in one place all eating perfectly made, picturesque ice cream cones. Education was definitely a large aspect of the programming and appeal of the area, as I could tell once I reached the visitors’ center. Inside, there was a whole exhibit detailing the history of these formations and how they were created over time by tectonic shift, environmental change, and erosion. Additionally, there were many informational packets available about the geological history and wildlife of the area, which I found very helpful when I was trying to identify different rock formations while out there. I started at Lulworth Cove, which is a beautiful, almost perfectly circular cove with a small mouth opening out into the Atlantic. It was formed over millions of years through an erosion of the coastline by waves on one side and a river emptying out into the ocean on the other. With the help of my handy informational pamphlet from the visitors’ center, I was able to see and read about the four types of rocks on display in different parts of the cove and how they were formed over time. In preparation for the trip, I had read some about the geology of the area, but it’s hard to get a good grasp of geologic processes over millions of years without having some sort of visual aid; actually being in the cove and getting to see the product of this geologic history was very illuminating for me.

An example of Purbeck Beds, a type of rock that was initially deposited horizontally, but due to tectonic shifting is often found vertical or curved.

Hiking around Lulworth Cove

The endless steps up this hill were worth it for the view!

After that I did the (steep) walk over the hill to the Durdle Door. This feature is an archway jutting out over the ocean from the cliff, and has been formed over millions of years from a weakness in the cliff rocks that eroded the cliff over time from the bottom up. Eventually, the waves will continue to erode at the strength of the Door’s arch so much that it will collapse and become a pillar separated from the coast itself.

The Durdle Door

The next day, I went by bus again towards the town of Swanage. At the suggestion of a couple I had met during dinner the night before, I stopped on the way for a quick visit at Corfe Castle. Corfe is a medieval town, and most of the buildings in the town center near the ruins of the castle are all old stone and thatched roof. The castle ruins themselves offered some beautiful views of the surrounding areas, as well as a little medieval market with kids programming. While this stop was on a whim, I did learn a little bit about the geology of the area from the small local museum, which had a lot of information about the importance of mining in the area. Interesting to think again about how, as was the case with geology in the nineteenth century and to an extent today, the driving forces of scientific discovery and research are often economic.

Corfe Castle

After taking a steam engine locomotive (another reason I stopped at Corfe) the thirty minutes to Swanage and checking into my bed and breakfast, I set out on a hike to see the Old Harry Rocks. The weather was absolutely beautiful for this hike, and, unlike the other days when I was traveling between towns, I was able to drop off my backpack at the bed and breakfast instead of carrying it with me the entire time. I knew I would have to be very mobile on the trip, so I packed everything for the week in a hiking backpack, much to my dad’s astonishment-- while this did add some difficulty to the hiking, it was definitely good practice before I lead FOP in a couple weeks! Nevertheless, I was happy not to have it on this hike.

To get from the Old Harry Rocks from Swanage, I walked along the beach for a long time, past vacationing families, a beachside arcade, and too many ice cream parlors to count. After going up a wooden staircase from the beach to the South West Coast Path, a hiking path that goes along the entirety of the Jurassic Coast, I walked up and then along the cliffs away from Swanage. It was slow-going, not just because it was steep, but because I was stopping every few feet to eat wild blackberries growing along the trail! Looking back from the top of the cliff there were great views of all of Swanage and its bay, with colorful shops and huts along the beach and jet skis and boats in the water. Passing through sheep and cattle pastures on the clifftop overlooking the Atlantic, I walked along the trail eventually to the cliff edge. From multiple lookout points, you could see different views of the white chalk cliff faces-- the Old Harry Rocks-- formed from marine organisms deposited on the bottom of what used to be an ocean covering this part of Britain. The brilliant white of the cliffs was in stark and beautiful contrast to the emerald grass on top and the incredible blue of the water below glittering in the afternoon sun. This was definitely the most stunning view of any of my hikes, and I spent a long time at the top looking out at the water and the cliffs, thinking about its geologic history and the different men and women who puzzled over it. I certainly take a lot of the study of geology and geologic history for granted today. While geologists are still postulating how parts of the world were formed and how they continue to change, it’s truly remarkable to imagine when these theories of Earth’s history, including basic concepts like glaciation, tectonic shifting, and even a time before humankind, were just being developed, and the ways scientists during this time had to stretch and test their minds, creativity, and faith to get to the truth.

Wild blackberries!

On the trail, looking back at Swanage

These cows have got quite a view

The white chalk cliffs of the Old Harry Rocks

            These four days busing around the Jurassic Coast, watching the idyllic pastoral landscape through the windows, visiting some truly quaint and charming towns, and seeing firsthand the impressive geologic features that geologists in the nineteenth century used to help wrap their minds around the history of the Earth was an illuminating experience for me, not only in the history of geology and paleontology, but also the process and difficulty of scientific discovery itself. As I head now to Oxford, I’m grateful to have been able to hike in some incredible scenery while getting a taste of the truly mind-blowing and humbling life story of the planet.