Fossil Hunting in England’s Jurassic - the beginning

Two of our members, Cindy and Barry Smith, are traveling this April to England.  Here begins their story:

Greetings from across the pond in Barry's childhood home, Grange-over-Sands, a tiny village in northwest England.  

Today [Apr. 7, 2014] we hiked in fresh drizzle and fog, through daffs, past sheep and over styles, to Hampsfell Hospice atop Carboniferous limestone featuring grykes, clints and runnels, the grykes sheltering fauna that grows nowhere else from the rabbits, sheep and cows.

For those who enjoy British geology:  
http://www.limestone-pavements.org.uk/documents/Grangeleafletlowres.pdf

Thursday [Apr. 10] we head west to our first of 3 Jurassic destinations, Whitby, a lovely fishing village on the Yorkshire coast, hosting the world's best ammonite museum, the home of alum, Captain Cook, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" setting at the local Abbey, various shipwrecks, and jet black (petrified wood made from the Araucariaceae tree, a relative of the Monkey Puzzle tree, made fashionable when Queen Victoria had it made into jewelry and wore it while in mourning for Prince Albert).  There we will have a few pints and collect ammonites, belemnites and, with luck, the odd marine reptile (!) between high tides from the cliffs and shores of the Upper and Lower Lias.

Our schedule:

4/10-17 Whitby on the North Sea, northeast coast of England

4/17-25 Charmouth near Lyme Regis on south coast

4/25-5/2  Castlemartin, Pembrokeshire, Wales, on the west coast

 
Tally ho!