Britain at its best: Inside the pretty seaside town of Lyme Regis - which boasts million-year-old fossils and a blooming restaurant scene

EXCLUSIVE Britain at its best: Inside the pretty seaside town of Lyme Regis - which boasts million-year-old fossils and a blooming restaurant scene Thomas W. Hodgkinson fossil-hunts for 'long-extinct species' in Lyme Regis He stays at Dorset House where he rates the hosts, and breakfast, highly READ MORE: A corking great wine tour through the UK's South Downs By Thomas W. Hodgkinson For The Daily Mail Published: 04:40 EDT, 14 August 2024 | Updated: 04:40 EDT, 14 August 2024 e-mail View comments Once upon a time, before anyone had heard of dinosaurs, locals in Dorset used to stumble on strange-shaped stones on the beach – and sell them as curios.

The curved sea-creatures we know as ammonites they called ‘sea snakes’. As for belemnite molluscs, they named them, rather colourfully, ‘devil’s fingers’. Later, it was realised they dated back millions of years – and many of these ‘curios’ are now displayed in the Natural History Museum.

It all happened on the shingle beaches and collapsing cliffs of the Jurassic Coast, near the pretty seaside town of Lyme Regis. When I go with my other half, we can’t resist a spot of fossil-hunting. To this day, the coast keeps eroding, revealing relics of long-extinct species.

Thomas W Hodgkinson heads to the seaside town of Lyme Regis for fossil-hunting, indoor 'real tennis' and seafood Pictured is Lyme Regis’s Dorset House townhouse where 'breakfast is an event' Above is the cute harbour in Lyme Regis, which lies on the Jura.