MY time in the UK is coming to an end and today, the last before I head back to London tomorrow and catch my BA flight home, was spent exploring England’s very own Jurassic Park.
I didn’t have to travel far to step back into pre-historic times, with Weymouth sitting smack in the middle of the Jurassic Coast which is a significant stretch of shore that runs from Swanage to Exmouth and was England’s first natural World Heritage site.
The Jurassic Coast is a 154km stretch of land beside the English Channel, running through Devon and Dorset, that has "rocks recording 184 million years of Earth’s history" giving visitors an insight into the Triassic and Cretaceous periods as well as Jurassic times.
While some people walk great sections of the shoreline – the South West Coast Path is a 1000km long trail that offers a "continuous coastal adventure through the World Heritage Site" with options for longer hikes or shorter strolls – I did the section between Weymouth and Lyme Regis by car.
There was lots of opportunity to stop during the drive to enjoy the magnificent views that appeared when the road rolled over the summit of a coastal hill, and I could also divert to visit some of the pretty villages found in the part of Devon.
There was a longer stop at Lyme Regis, a quintessential English seaside village where the shops were full of buckets and spades for sale so younger visitors could build sand castles and a Lifeboat station sat next to the harbour.
That was what I expected an English seaside village to look like and there was a line of bathing boxes painted in pastel shades flanking the boardwalk, a beach with pebbles rather than sand, and lots of shivering children dressed in their togs trying to ignore that fact it was far too cold to be considering a swim in the sea.
