Dino's & Donkeys

Well, falling asleep in a tent while listening to the loud braying of donkeys wouldn’t normally be easy (or thinkable really), but after hiking for 6+ hours a day it was effortless!  This past Labor Day weekend Chris and I drove about four hours to the southwest coast of England to hike a little bit of England’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site: the Jurassic Coast.  It’s named as such because its 95 miles of rocks depict 185 million years of the Earth’s history. The Jurassic Coast Path is a tiny section of the Southwest Coast Path (http://www.southwestcoastpath.com/); an epic version of one of the awesome English footpaths I love that literally traces the coast 630 miles around the southwest tip of England. 



On this map we hiked from Exmouth almost to Lyme Regis.



SW Coast Path signage



Sidmouth boardwalk (see the red cliffs in the background? We hiked those!)




Chris looking out over the next few hills we'd have to climb.



We started on the most Western part of the Jurassic Coast in a town called Exmouth, where red cliffs drop off steeply to the ocean’s edge. The cliffs are 250+ MILLION years old, from the Triassic period.  Trekking east on the Jurassic Coast's  95 miles, the rock morphs from the Triassic to Jurassic and then Cretaceous periods.   (Forgotten earth sciences?  That’s the entire Mesozoic Era.)  We didn’t make it all 95 miles in one weekend, so saw mostly the 250 million year old Triassic rock formed under desert conditions (hence not very much organic material so the iron oxidizes and turns red in color.)  



Chris suggested an 'alternate route' along the beach for a few miles...



... I should've vetoed because that alternate route required a rope to get down to the beach...

... at the bottom, Chris points out the light colored bands that indicate periods of deposition in the presense of plant life...

... ugh, walking along the beach wasn't easy because it was made of (fairly large) rocks instead of sand...

.... almost three miles of walking on these (the whole ground gives when you step on them) was tough on the legs!...

...weird clay-like clifs that release all the pebbles/rocks that make up the beach...

.... rocks hanging out of the cliff, ready to fall and make our hike even more difficult...



...dang, we didn't even realize!...





Can you see Chris up on the top there?  Look at all the 'landslips' (landslides) at the water's edge.



Erosion works away the softer rock and leaves the free-standing pillars.

We saw some chalk cliffs from the Cretaceous Period as well – they’re the white ones in some of the photos below.  Next time we trek to the southwest we’re definitely going “hunting” in the Jurassic rock farther east… apparently it’s full of fossils! 

Looking a bit rough...

Typical English countryside.



The trail doesn't stay at sea level, rather goes up and down over the cliffs and hills!




Oh yeah, getting braver!!



White Cretaceous rocks in Beer.  Luckily there were towns like this one along the way that let us take 'pint breaks'...

You can't go hungry along the trail - we always seem to talk about the blackberries but here are some photos that put it in perspective:



Blackberry bushes all along the trail.



Yummy.

We camped near Sidmouth for the weekend.  Our campsite just so happened to be next to the UK Donkey Sanctuary.  I swear the donkeys got louder as night fell… they make some funny noises.  We were freezing, too!  Labor Day and the low was in the 40's... hope all you people that got to spend the weekend on the lake are enjoying the heat for all of us!