Fossilling at Kilve

Another day, another beach. But first lunch at the reopened Hood Arms in Kilve, which still sells Rich's cider, hooray!

And then on to Kilve beach.

This is Kilve Pill. I like the fact that the word for a creek or small river emptying off the flood plain into the Bristol Channel is still in use all the way down here in West Somerset.

The last time I was here was two and a half years ago with my niece and my parents. 

Right at the end of his life, my father became obsessed with fossils. It started on a day trip to Lulworth, and intensified at Kilve, which is just about the best place for finding fossils that I know. 

When he saw the photos I took of my niece with a particularly large fossil, it became the most desirable thing in the world. 

Back home he asked and asked me to get it for him. No matter that it was attached to a thick slab of rock that probably weighed several hundredweight. 

'I would need a small crane, Dad,' I'd say. 'Or a couple of teams of rugby players.'

He suggested I go down early one morning when no one was about, and to take my partner with me. 'He's a big enough bloke.' 

'Even if we could lift it,' I said, 'there's no way we'd be able to carry it over the rocks.' 

'You could use your mother's shopping trolley,' he said. 'She wouldn't mind.'

I think he'd have liked this fossil Son the Younger found, which is portable on account of being only six inches long, but still hefty for all that. 

This one, however, stayed put ...

... as did these. 

High time for an ice cream at Kilve Chantry.