Two Bears in Dorset - Fossil Hunting!

 This summer, Hanley Bear and I went on a super holiday with Polar, Grizzly, Grizzly's daughter and son-in-law and Grizzly's grandcubs, plus Florence, their doggie.

We all rented a pretty cottage together in Dorset.  On the way, we met two Small Bears from Shaftsbury in Dorset who said that there was a lot to enjoy in their home county.  Of course Hanley told them it could not possibly be as good as Staffordshire.

"But we have a coastline - with fossils!" said one of the Dorset Bears.  "And apple cake."

Hanley and I agreed that the apple cake was delicious, although Shaftsbury is better known to humans of a certain age for a certain type of loaf, that isn't actually made there!

 

The first day we were in Dorset was the elder grandcub's birthday.  He had presents to open, but his main present was joining a fossil-hunting walk along the beach at Charmouth.

 

We searched very carefully and found some tiny ammonites, but there were huge ones to see in the museum, which were bigger than us.  We found it hard to believe these had been sea creatures alive hundreds of millions of years ago. 

After Charmouth, we visited Lyme Regis for lunch, which I had to explain to Hanley was nothing to do with Newcastle-under-Lyme, the town next to Stoke-on-Trent.  He said the beer was very good, even if it wasn't brewed in Staffordshire.

Then we went for a walk and saw the statue of Mary Anning, who discovered lots of ancient creatures while excavating fossils in the 19th century, with the help of her dog, Tray.

Back at the cottage, we made a proper "Finds Table" of the coffee table, putting down lots of newspaper so we didn't scratch it and sorting our fossils into different types and sizes. 

It was tiring work for Small Bears!

Another day, we went to the Etches Museum, founded by Mr Steve Etches who still excavates fossils around Kimmeridge Bay and has a huge Pliosaur skull and hundreds of other amazing finds.

We bought a tiny envelope of small fossils each with our pocket money to add to our collection from Charmouth, and Polar collected some leaflets about the different types of rock to share with the local school.

Then we went fossil-hunting on the beach again.  Kimmeridge Bay was quite different to Charmouth, and you could see the outlines of several big ammonites in the flat rocks along the shore.

As well as looking for fossils, we were able to search for interesting living creatures in the rock pools, while Florence ran about on the flat rocks. 

"I hope she doesn't run too far," said Hanley.  "There might be bombs and bullets further up the beach!"

But both the human cubs and Florence were very sensible and didn't go past the warning sign, even though we couldn't see any red flags.

On the way home, we stopped at The Blue Pool, a lovely country park around a lake.  Hanley Bear was very excited when he found out that the lake is there because lots a clay was dug out of the ground here and sent to Wedgwood's factory in Stoke-on-Trent for making fine china.

Hanley and I climbed some of the pine trees and tried to find any small wild bears living in the woods but, if they were there, they were obviously very shy.

Back at the cottage, we opened our little packets of fossils to see what we had.  They were very small indeed, but ideal for a Small Bear collection, so we will look after them carefully.

We had other adventures in Dorset too, so I will try to write about those soon, as I have lots to tell you about our adventures this year that I haven't put on my blog yet!