Lovely Lyme

Lyme Bay stretches its 60-mile arc from the promontory of Portland Bill, Dorset, to the shores of Torbay, South Devon.  A beautiful bay, it includes many places familiar in our lives - Teignmouth, Dawlish, Exmouth and Sidmouth all feature, as well as West Bay, best-known at the moment for the location of the ITV crime drama, Broadchurch.  Somewhere in the middle of this stretch of coastline, lying equidistance from the lovely county towns of Exeter and Dorchester, sits one of our favourite towns - the quiet, picturesque settlement of Lyme Regis.  On an Easter Saturday where the sun was certainly feeling a little shy, we made our way across the border to the Pearl of Dorset, for a morning of browsing in this most interesting of towns.

Lyme Regis is a lovely little town.  The shops are intriguing, there's a sense of community and civic pride, not a spot of litter to be seen on our visit, and a convivial atmosphere.  Our first port of call is the Beach House Cafe, which looks like your run-of-the-mill coastal cafe, but serves up one of the most delicious bacon baguettes I've ever eaten.  We sit and watch the world go by for half an hour, allowing the day to limber up and the shops to throw open their doors, before making for the town centre, and Lizzie's favourite shop, the Pug and Puffin, which sells all things dog.  Then it's onto Ammonite Fine Foods where I pick up a bottle of ale, the lovely independent bookshop Serendip, and an antiques market selling all manner of things.  There's no great number of shops in this little town centre - certainly nothing to keep you more than an hour - but what is there is different, local, and very nicely done.

Of course, the culture of Lyme Regis is built on fossils, and it's easy to imagine yourself stepping back into Victorian times here, perhaps to play the role of Professor Lidenbrock from the Jules Verne classic, Journey to the Centre of the Earth.  References to the Jurassic Coast are everywhere, and there's plenty to occupy the mind of anybody with even a passing interest in ammonites and trilobites.  I actually find it an amazing experience to hold the fossil of a creature that lived some 200 million years ago, and it almost baffles me with how blasé the locals are to such activity.  Then again, fossils are everywhere here - I suppose it's similar to how holidaymakers delight in seagulls back in Torquay.  For me, it's a chance to add to my own tiny collection of fossils - the fish below, at only 50 million years old, is much closer in time to my existence than it is to the ammonite (170 million year old,) and the orthoceras (the black one, which is around 400 million years old.)  Just think about that for a moment.

Out on "The Cobb" - that's the town's harbour wall (which apparently featured in Jane Austen's Persuasion) - the boats bob gently in the harbour, and the day trippers are gathering in number.  An old-fashioned aquarium sits here, offering visitors a fascinating insight into the local sea life of Lyme Bay.  There's mullet, wrasse, crabs and lobsters, starfish, pipefish and dogfish - all kept under the watchful eye of an old fisherman, with a treasury of tall tales to match.  Some of the non-fish elements that he has dragged up in his career are hung up on the wall - they include pieces of sunken ships, and the cockpit canopy of a red arrow plane that crashed in the 1980s.  The fisherman himself tells the crowd that he once dragged up a Spitfire, complete with pilot - and hey, who am I to disbelieve him?

Our morning complete, we leave the packed carpark for the road home, calling in at the Sidmouth Donkey Sanctuary, for a quick look at our favourite animals in action.  Then it's on to Greendale farm shop, not far from Exeter, where we are treated to this year's first sighting of a swallow - always a pleasure to observe, and always a very welcome sign that summer is on the way.  Westcountry days don't get much better than that.