Day 13 in England: In the Footsteps of Mary Anning

 

Low tide waits for no one, and so three of us were up at the crack of dawn this morning to drive over to Lyme Regis and spend a couple more hours in the footsteps of Mary Anning.

Here's our complete itinerary for the day:

• fossil hunting in Lyme Regis
• back to Beer for breakfast and picking up the sleepyhead
• back to Lyme Regis again for sightseeing
• drive back to Gatwick Airport, stopping at a convenient local chain store along the way for souvenirs
• drop off the rental car, check into our airport hotel, and try to fit a hundred pounds of rocks and fossils into four carry-ons and four personal items!

Who knows how on earth we would have gotten all our rocks and fossils home if we'd been as successful at fossil hunting as I am in my dreams!

We parked by Monmouth Beach, then hustled west, where we puttered on the shore, fossil hunting and admiring the Ammonite Pavement:

We found a few pretty treasures of our own!

The best part, though, was imagining myself in the footsteps of Mary Anning. This stretch of coast was her backyard, and although she ranged widely both east and west, this was her home ground:

I'm sure I'm grubbing in the wet sand just like she did, only she was wearing massive wool skirts and I'm wearing a filthy pair of joggers:

Eventually, we had to make the long walk down the beach back to our car (funny how the walk is always SO much longer on the way back!) so we could go back to Beer and fetch our teenager before checkout.

I did wash my hands before I sat down for my last full English breakfast of the trip, but I didn't change out of my muddy clothes. Gotta stay true to myself no matter where I am!

In our early morning trip to Lyme Regis, we'd encountered little traffic and just a couple of dog walkers and joggers. By mid-morning, however, Bank Holiday Monday/Mid-Term Break was in full swing omg! Matt was a tentative but extremely careful driver during this whole week, and it was funny/terrifying to encounter so many absolutely terrible drivers on these, the narrowest roads outside of Dartmoor--honestly, I think some were even narrower than in Dartmoor! We missed by centimeters being collided into by a car that turned into us around a blind corner, and half the cars we saw (including ours, ahem) spent half the time driving half onto the sidewalk. And that was even with us parking in a pay lot at the edge of town--the traffic we saw in the middle of town was absolutely bonkers!

British friends, WHAT ON EARTH.

Nevertheless, I made it to my ultimate destination, the pinnacle of this trip: 

I was so lucky, because this museum is closed on Mondays. The only exception?

School breaks!

So me and all the rowdy school kids and all their parents happily crowded inside on this Half-Term Monday, and I could achieve my dream of worshipping at the feet of Mary Anning, on the spot where she once lived and worked and kept her fossils.

The Lyme Regis Museum is built on the site of Mary Anning's former house, which was torn down in 1889. The only known depiction of what her house looked like is this drawing--

--which the museum turned into this model:

I love those picture windows. I imagine them all full of fossils!

The museum has a wonderful mix of exhibits. It has fossils collected (or likely collected) by Mary Anning--

I have explained to Matt numerous times that I am in desperate need of a giant LEGO ichthyosaur of my own, and yet what did I get for my birthday? Well, actually I got an absolutely awesome DIY model kit of Stonehenge and I'm thrilled with it... but I also still really want a giant LEGO ichthyosaur!

This fossil is a shark skull, the first of its kind and used as the holotype of the species. Mary Anning discovered it, collected it, and prepared it... so obviously it's named Hybodus bechei after Henry De la Beche.

This complete ichthyosaur fossil is on loan here while the Lyme Regis Museum crowdfunds the money to purchase it.

--items from the period in which she lived--

Look at all those pipes! I mudlarked so many of their stems on the Thames!

--and tons of other fossils collected in this area and donated by local fossil hunters. 

The gift shop was great, too. Here's me having an emotional reaction to JURASSIC CREATURE STUFFIES!!!

I'm supposed to stop buying "family stuffies" so I did not bring any home, but I intend to revisit this ridiculous rule soon. The only stuffies that I so far own and insist on exhibiting in the family space are 1) an Edmontosaurus annectens, 2) a whale shark, 3) the exact same mermaid sequin dinosaur that the SpaceX Crew Dragon took into orbit as their "gravity indicator," and 4) Captain Ameribear, a Build a Bear that I liberated from a friend as we were setting up for a group garage sale. That is NOT too many family stuffies, you guys!

One of the exhibit labels in the Lyme Regis Museum mentioned that Mary Anning was buried at St. Michael's Church, "just a few hundred meters from the museum." So guess what I Googled next?

That's two of my most favorite heroines who have died of breast cancer, if you're keeping count.

St. Michael's Church, like Mary Anning's former house, has its back to the sea, and below the church there's actually a paved path that follows the coast and passes over the spot where she made one of her best discoveries. 

If you walk down the path to the end, you'll find Mary, herself, ammonite in hand, Tray at her feet, walking with purpose towards eternity:

Yes, I made Matt take a photo of me walking arm in arm with her, chatting like the best friends we are. I have a very vivid and active internal life!

My meeting with Mary was the culmination and final wish on my list for this trip, so we meandered slowly back to our car up the narrow streets of Lyme Regis, browsing in every rocks and fossil shop we saw along the way. We braved the last of the narrow roads, and Matt handled the A303 like a man who'd been driving here his whole life and knew every single rule for roundabouts:

On the outskirts of London, I found a shopping area that said it had a Sainsbury's, so we detoured over for Cadbury and crisps to take back home, and we had a lovely surprise! The teenager had discovered, too late in the London leg of our trip, a discount bookstore chain that she wanted to visit. This was our second to last day in the city, though, and there was not a location anywhere near us--but, alas, the day before, when we'd taken that long bus trip out to Pax Lodge, we'd seen one from the bus window but didn't know what it was! ARGH!

I felt terrible about it, because it was, like, literally one of two entire things the kid expressed genuine interest in during the entire trip, so omg I was beyond ecstatic when it turned out that this shopping area had The Works bookstore! 

Bonus: it also had a Sainsbury's AND a Poundland! All our cheap souvenirs in one convenient trip!

• Day 1: We made it to England!
• Day 2: Westminster Abbey, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and Six
• Day 3: British Museum and Buckingham Palace
• Day 4: Mudlarks and Southwark
• Day 5: Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum
• Day 6: Pax Lodge, the Tower of London, and Afternoon Tea
• Day 7: Back and Forth by Boat to Greenwich
• Day 8: We Careen Our Way to Canterbury Cathedral and Dover Beach
• Day 9: Dover, Hastings, and a Holloway
• Day 10, Part 1: All the Giant Rocks
• Day 10, Part 2: Stonehenge, At Last!
• Day 11: To Avalon with King Arthur
• Day 12: Tintagel
• Day 13: In the Footsteps of Mary Anning
• Day 14: Homewards!