J is for Jurassic coast, Dorset

A neat perfectly formed weekend-sized break in Dorset.  Plenty to do, and not all of it weather-dependent.  We enjoyed our first family YHA stay, too.

We loved:  Beer and Lyme Regis beaches, the Dinosaur museum and Beer Youth Hostel.

Day 1: Beer YHA

The beautiful youth hostel in Beer

A family dorm with a choice of bunks, ensuite and a view

The communal lounge

We’ve been meaning to try a family room at a Youth Hostel For ages and Beer YHA was a top choice for the weekend.  It was brilliant!  Big family en-suite room with a view, communal kitchen, garden for a kick around, lounge downstairs, and Risk!

Beer beach from the cliff path

Pebbles, beach huts, biting cold winds = v British beach day in winter!

These boats reminded me of childhood mackerel fishing trips

Started our day with a hop to Beer beach for some lunch, beach-combing and wave jumping.  The beach was breezy, pebbly and slightly grey — so beautiful in a very British way! There was even the obligatory seagull perched on a fishing boat.

Food shopping in Beer, twilight

BEER 🙂

We were keen to cook in the hostel kitchen so shopped for supplies in the village stores  and then cooked our random choices in the communal kitchen before our first family game of Risk.

Day 2: Lovely Lyme Regis

If there’s sand a castle must be made …

Not sure what’s happening here..

Such a lovely view back towards the town from the cobb

The perennially favourite running away from the waves game

We had such a gloriously sunny day in Lyme Regis. One of those days you take a million photos (see above and below) just because the sun is shining and the sky is blue.  Oh, and you’re somewhere beautiful too.

Strange December days …

… eating on the beach in December!

The Town Beach is lined with cafes, takeaways and lots of pubs.

Mostly today we walked and played on the beach. We walked along Town Beach, where thousands of tonnes of pebbles were imported as part of the coastal protection scheme and placed on top of the pebbles originally there.  When you get near the harbour and the Cobb, Town beach becomes sandy with sand was imported from France. Plenty of kiosks, takeaways, cafes, restaurants and pubs bordering this section of the beach too— we even ATE LUNCH on the beach — in December!

Did us some fossil hunting, too.  We walked along the new Church Cliff Walk to the fossil-rich East Cliff Beach (warning — this gets cut off at high tide) to search for fossils.  Although we didn’t find any amazing fossils, there was plenty of beach-combing to be done; due to landslides here, quite a lot of old rubbish had recently arrived on this beach.

Fossil hunting on East Cliff beach

Fossil-nose

Moody poser

As it started to get dark we popped into the marvellously quirky Dinosaurland Fossil Museum.  This private museum, owned and run by Palaeontologist Steve Davies and his wife Jenny, feels like stepping back a century, to display cabinets of stuffed animals, fossils and bones.  It’s housed in a magnificent grade 1 listed building which was once the Congregational Church. The pioneering fossil hunter Mary Anning, who discovered the first Ichthyosaur on the beaches here in 1811, was baptised there. 

Dinosaur land Fossil Museum’s stuffed animals were a hit ..

… as were the displays of fossils …

.. and the model dinosaurs on the top floor.

Useful info

We stayed at: Beer Youth Hostel

We ate at:  The Anchor Inn, Beer

We visited:  Dinosaurland Fossil Museum

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