The Jurassic Coast

The Jurassic Coast runs 95 miles from Exmouth's red Triassic cliffs in East Devon to the chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks in Dorset, and its inscription as England's first natural World Heritage site in 2001 honours a geological trick found almost nowhere else: the tilted rock layers expose roughly 185 million years of Earth history - Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous in sequence - so walking the coast path is walking through deep time. The greatest hits crowd the Dorset half: the perfect scallop of Lulworth Cove, the wave-cut arch of Durdle Door, golden Man O'War beach, and fossil-rich shores at Lyme Regis and Charmouth where Mary Anning found the marine reptiles that helped invent palaeontology - beach-combing after winter storms still surrenders ammonites. The South West Coast Path stitches it together over switchback climbs, with Golden Cap rising as the south coast's highest point.

History

At the end of the 18th century Georges Cuvier showed that some fossil animals were unlike any living ones and so could die out, giving rise to palaeontology, and the fossil beds of east Devon and west Dorset, until then gathered as curios for visitors, became a field of science. Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, who followed her father as a collector, became an expert on the fossils of the Blue Lias and found the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton, followed by plesiosaurs, a pterosaur and fossil cephalopods with their ink sacs. In the Second World War parts of the coast were taken over by the military, and the village of Tyneham was evacuated; in December 2001 the coast, about 96 miles from Exmouth to Studland Bay and spanning 185 million years of rock, became a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Jurassic Coast).

What's there

• Durdle Door - the limestone arch above its barrel-curved beach.
• Lulworth Cove - the textbook scallop bay carved through the rock layers.
• Lyme Regis fossils - Mary Anning's shore, ammonites after storms.
• Old Harry Rocks - the chalk stacks closing the coast at Studland.

When to go

April to October for settled walking weather; winter's storms bring the best fossil hunting to Charmouth and Lyme the days after. Durdle Door in July and August is shoulder-to-shoulder by late morning.

Before you go

The cliffs crumble - rockfalls are regular, so stay off the cliff bases and back from edges, and fossil-hunt on the foreshore, not by digging the cliffs. Honeypot parking at Lulworth and Durdle Door is expensive and fills early. The coast path's endless descents and climbs are honest work.

Nearby

Corfe Castle's ruins, the Isle of Portland and Weymouth's Georgian seafront.

Key facts