Excursion to Warwickshire

Weekend excursion to Dorset May 17th – 19th 2002

There cannot be a geological society in the country which doesn’t at one time or another visit the classic area of the Dorset coast, or at least aspire to get there. The reasons for this are obvious enough – wonderful uninterrupted and accessible exposure of some of the most fossiliferous Mesozoic rocks in the country set in localities of often stunning coastal scenery. And what fossils! Not just your run-of-the-mill brachiopods, corals and the like (although there are more than enough excellent examples of these in private collections, museums and geology departments up and down the country). No, these are special fossils – huge marine reptiles, ammonites of all sizes up to the truly enormous and even a few dinosaurs which somehow got themselves into the sea to be fossilised. So, naturally, Section C have been there, a few years ago under the leadership of Dr David Martill. But one visit is never enough, and this year Field Secretary Dennis Gamble was adamant that we would go to Lyme Regis. And so we did, over the weekend of May 17^th – 19^th, under the leadership this time of the Chairman.

The party of 19 arrived gradually through the day and evening of Friday 17^th, and was billetted in the Bay Hotel, which, appropriately, overlooked Lyme Bay. It was perfect for our needs, but quaintly, didn’t have a car park, only a large lock-up garage about 7 minutes away. So it was necessary to park as close as we could on the prom and then unload bags, before taking our vehicles off to the garage. Once we were all gathered I gave an illustrated introduction in the large lounge to what we were to see over the weekend. The plan on Saturday 18^th was to walk westwards along the foreshore to Pinhay Bay, about two miles distant, and then work our way back in a sensible up-sequence way from the Late Triassic Penarth Group rocks in the Bay through increasingly younger Jurassic rocks back to the Cobb. The sequence ended at ground level there somewhere in the Shales-with-beef, which was overlain by Black Ven Marls in the low cliffs. During our traverse we saw the full sequence of the Blue Lias. Grumbles about spending too much time looking at the splendid and complex Langport Member sequence in Pinhay Bay were, of course, quite unjustified.

(Left) The party at Eype’s Mouth. From L to R: Karen Stace, Robert Tripp, Joanne Norris, Keith Smithson, Freda Smithson, John Webster, Bruce Smith (in rear), leader Andrew Swift, Fiona Barnaby, Barry East, Margaret East, Helen Jones, John Martin, Gary Freestone, and sitting at the front on the right, Dennis Gamble, Carolyn Coale and Mark Evans. (Photo © 2002 Andrew Swift)

Sadly, despite the best efforts of the more eagle-eyed amongst us, no marine reptiles or Jurassic dinosaurs were discovered, not even a vertebrae. But several other lesser finds were made and some of the party joined in with the leader in trying to identify the various beds of the Blue Lias, the more prominent of which had rather strange and/or descriptive names like Specketty, Mongrel and Skulls. The reason for this is that the Blue Lias used to be actually quarried off the beach, and the old quarrymen needed to identify each bed to know where they were in the sequence. They chose names which suited the characteristics of the appearance of the bed using words which had everyday meaning.

It was originally planned that on arrival back in Lyme we should ascend to the cliffs behind the beach to study the processes of landslipping, which is so prominent in the cliffs all along the Dorset and east Devon coast, but the proximity of numerous ice cream outlets around the Cobb, coupled with understandable fatigue, meant that no enthusiasm for such a venture could be detected, and we called it a day. The evening featured the normal pursuits of geologists liberated from their everyday environment, although impromptu gate crashing of a local citizen’s birthday party by certain members until the early hours was found not to be a good preparation for the Sunday to follow.

That Sunday dawned dark and gloomy, and the drab weather continued during our visit to the cliffs to either side of Eype Mouth, near West Bay. That, however, did nothing to dampen spirits and enthusiasm and after an introduction to what was to be seen, the eager group dispersed in search of further fossil booty, taking care of course, as instructed, to a) avoid falling to their doom from the cliffs and, b) try and understand the geology of the sequence as well as simply adding to their collections. At around 1 o’ clock an end was called and it was with regret that we dispersed to our various destinations.

Andrew Swift