Lyme Regis

Tree
Originally uploaded by tamaranth

On Wednesday, craving fresh air and escape, I headed for Lyme Regis. (Note to self: Google Maps not always right. 3.5 hours to drive there; electing not to die of boredom on the A303, I looked at the road atlas, picked the 'obvious' route (M3), and cut the journey time by over half an hour.) Lyme Regis itself is ever so pretty (if hilly), and I had a late lunch on the beach in the sunshine.

Despite picking a windy Wednesday, the beach was quite busy with fossil-hunters and school groups, and it was hard to escape the arrhythmic clatter of geologists' hammers. Ammonites not as thick on the ground as I'd hoped: I didn't find anything spectacular. (See Flickr for the best of the rest.)

Fossil-hunting is all about pattern recognition: looking for the regular spiral of an ammonite, the symmetry of a sea urchin, the smooth bullet-shape of a belemnite. Lyme Regis beach is strewn, for some reason, with rusted machine parts. I find it much harder to look for specific patterns, or to filter out anything rust-coloured.

It was lovely, though, to walk on the beach and soak up sunshine and salt air. Good to stop arguing with myself and live in the moment.

Definitions

Alarm -- the sensation felt when, alone in the flat, someone clasps your shoulders from behind.
Amusement -- the very unjust and unkind desire to laugh hysterically when your cat, having induced Alarm, cannot unhitch his claws from your cardigan and has to stay like that all evening.

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(I read this on fjm's recommendation ...)
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