Through the Interface

In the last post I wrote about our recent time in Brittany and Cornwall.

Something I find very striking about the English countryside is the thatching on (some of) the rooves. This also apparently exists in Brittany, but seems to be more rare.

I'd been speculating about the amount of upkeep needed on a thatched roof and then we came across one being replaced. I suppose you could call it a cottage industry! (Groan.)

It turns out a thatched roof can last as long as 40 years - if maintained well - although the ridge will probably need replacing every 10-15.

After leaving the donkey sanctuary in Sidmouth, we checked into our Airbnb on Lyme Regis's historic Broad Street.

Lyme Regis was where we were celebrating my mother's 75th birthday, with various members of the family congregating here for the weekend of July 13th-14th.

We'll get into some of what makes Lyme (the Regis is an optional suffix for locals, at least) so historic. Just to start, it's incredibly scenic.

We really enjoyed just walking down to the water and along the seafront.

Our Airbnb was really well located towards the top of Broad Street, and being up near the roofline we even had a partial sea view.

The town was accessible by foot, so we did quite a lot of walking.

The biggest attraction for us was the sea itself.

There are some fantastic beaches accessible by foot from Lyme, especially at low tide.Our first full day in Lyme - July 13th - fell on Lyme Morris Day 2024. This brought back memories - I used to do a bit of Morris dancing back in primary school. And no, I am not sharing photos. If you're new to Morris dancing, be sure to check this video of the event.

One of the most iconic landmarks in Lyme is its harbour wall, the Cobb. This has existed in some form since the middle ages, although it's been destroyed and rebuilt several times over the centuries.

The Cobb has been featured in a number of important books and films, over the years, including Jane Austen's Persuasion and John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (and it's 1981 film adaptation with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons). 

It's actually why we ended up in Lyme Regis, as my sister is a fan of literature and made the excellent suggestion that we should all come here.

During one of our evenings in Lyme we streamed The French Lieutenant's Woman, which was somewhat surreal. We could literally (or literarily?) see locations from the movie out of the window. (Check this site for a "then" and "now" comparison between shots from the film and photos taken in 2016.)

The other literary reference I mentioned was from Jane Austen's Persuasion. People often speculate that the steps Louisa Musgrove fell from - thereby injuring herself - were the so-called Granny's Teeth, but it seems these were only built after the book was written. There are other steps on the Cobb that are more likely candidates, for whatever's that's worth.

Fishing is still a big deal in Lyme: you can go out on fishing trips and eat the freshest of fish. Next to the Cobb there's a door with a famous Herbert Hoover quote above it.

The industry is presumably not what it once was, but you can still see fishing boats in the harbour.

It was nice to see this historic price list on display. I had to explain to my kids that "s" and "d" stood for "shillings" and "pence" respectively.

Here were more trappings of the fishing industry:

To get some really fresh fish - that had been fished that morning - we went to The Wet Fish Shop.

We bought a mixture of bass and mackerel (and ended up going back later in the week for scallops):

We had a lovely time celebrating my Mum's birthday!

I mentioned watching some of the Euro 2024 along the way. By the time we arrived in Lyme, it was time for the final where England played Spain. Here's a sign posted in the local Tesco's.

I had to go to a pub to watch the game, so popped to The Ship Inn with the most motivated of my children. It was great to see a championship final while on British soil, even if the result was disappointing.

There's something else that's very special about the area around Lyme Regis. It's part of the Jurassic Coast, a section of the southern English coastline that's of major geological and paleontological importance.

Lyme is the birthplace of Mary Anning, whose life collecting and analysing fossils proved to be of huge importance to the field. In fact Jeremy Irons's character in The French Lieutenant's Woman was a gentleman fossil-collector.

There are references to this history throughout the town, from large ammonites embedded in the walls of buildings to the styling of the street lamps.

Early on in our stay we met with a well-known local guide, Nigel Clarke, to go on a "fossil walk" on the beach at neighbouring Charmouth.It was really helpful having Nigel describe the various types of rock that contain fossils, which very quickly helped us zero-in on likely candidates. He started finding ammonites embedded in rocks so quickly that initially I thought he must have planted them. (Yes, I did check for price labels. 😉

He definitely has "the eye", having honed his pattern-matching skills over many years, but even we found we could spot them on our own more quickly as time progressed.

It really was a dream come true for anyone who obsessed over fossils as a child. I could have spent weeks sifting the beach for ammonites and belemnites (my son even found an ichthyosaurus vertebra!) and in fact we did spend many hours doing so over the coming days.

While Charmouth was in many ways the best spot we found along this section of coast, we also enjoyed the stretch from Lyme towards Charmouth, known as East Cliff Beach.

Fossils are released by storms attacking the Jurassic cliffs (particularly in winter) for collectors to find through the year.

Anything you find on the beach can be taken home. This effectively motivates an army of amateurs to seek items of high value (which occasionally happens) which can then be sold to the local museums, etc.

As you walk along the beach you'll hear the tap, tap, tap of hammers hitting rocks, as people try to extract fossils embedded in them.

I will say that starting down at your feet is not exactly the perfect activity for someone trying to improve their posture away from their computer screen. Maybe I need to invest in some 90-degree mirrored glasses?

Despite a little back-ache, we had an absolute blast.

I've always felt that beachcombing would be a wonderful way to spend my later years, and now that I've been to this part of the world I'm even more convinced it would suit me.

Although I admit that both Daisy and I found it tiring, at times.

An interesting section of the East Cliff Beach has eroded to display altogether more recent, man-made artifacts. An ancient rubbish tip has been released onto the beach, which makes for a strange mix of items there.

Here's some algae-covered, reinforced concrete with the rebar poking through, for instance. It was quite surreal, this mix between the man-made and the truly ancient. It was like something out of a sci-fi novel where humanity itself is long extinct.

We had such a good time in Lyme Regis, but all good things eventually come to an end. From here we headed east to loop round via the London area before tunneling our way back to continental Europe.

The first stop I'm going to mention towards the east was actually one we made the night before leaving Lyme, as it was a less than 30-minute drive from the town. We drove to Langdon Hill, which was the easiest way to access the coast path to get to Golden Cap, the highest point in the region. Even the walk around Langdon Hill was magical.

Here you can see us walking up towards Golden Cap with Langdon Hill in the background.

The view along the coast in both directions was incredible, although the view eastwards let us take photos without pointing towards the sun.

And the view to the north was also gorgeous.

We headed back down having very much enjoyed the walk and the view. If you have more time you can walk for a much longer section of the coast path - even from Lyme itself - but this was just right for us.

A little further around the coast - and this we did after leaving Lyme properly - is Hive Beach, another National Trust property that is simply stunning.

The cliffs were magnificent.

You're advised to stay away from the cliffs in case of rockfall, as they seem quite fragile.

We did get some shade for a while in one of the more protected overhangs. The only risk I could see would be if the whole section of cliff collapsed, any smaller rocks would have missed us. Anyway, it was a much cooler place to have a quick bite, and we didn't stay for long.

Interestingly this stop was the only time we were in any way impacted by the CrowdStrike issue, as we couldn't pay for our parking by credit card. (We could by the time we left, however.) This was the first time I'd even heard about it (the National Trust person talked about "the Microsoft problem", which I then had to Google), which I suppose is a testament to how disconnected I'd become.

From here we headed to Reading, passing "quickly" by Stonehenge, only to find that it's even more crowded and complicated to see the stones than ever, what with shuttle buses and the like... we chose to skip it.

We spent a lovely Friday evening with old friends of ours, Ben and Katy, and their children, Will and Sophie.

Ben and Katy still get milk delivered to their doorstep, which is simply wonderful. Seeing milk bottles like this took me right back to my youth.

On Saturday we headed to Cookham, where we walked along the Thames...

... and had an absolutely amazing pub lunch with my brother and his friends at The Old Swan Uppers.

We then stayed for a few nights in Eton with Simon, another old friend from university. He took us for a lovely walk around Windsor Great Park, part of The Crown Estate.

This place was completely jaw-dropping. I had no idea it was so huge and well-tended.

An amazing place to spend a few hours!

It was really nice to see Simon alongside my family: I get to see him more frequently, with the occasional work-trip to London, but it's been way too long since I've been across with everyone else.

It was great to see our kids reconnecting.
On the Monday I popped into the Agar Street office in Covent Garden with Daisy while the rest of the family shopped, mainly in Camden Town. It was really nice to catch up with Dom, Andy, and my main partner-in-crime in our particular area of research, Dagmara.

On Tuesday it was time to head home. We got to Folkestone in good time to catch our early afternoon Le Shuttle crossing, and then powered on down through Belgium and Luxembourg to spend the night in Nancy, the historic capital of Lorraine.We didn't get to spend much time there - we luckily managed to arrive just before the last Carrefour Express closed for the night, so we could get food for a late-night picnic in one of our rooms - and after a simple breakfast we headed across the Jura to get back home.It was a lovely trip. It was great to see family and close friends - it's not always easy to stay in touch with the pressures of modern life, but this was a lovely opportunity to reconnect as well as to see some absolutely stunning natural beauty.

Now I just have to sort through that bag of rocks.