Virtual Fossil Hunt!

Many of you know that fossil hunting is pretty much on the daily agenda here, so I thought I'd show how easy it is (not!). The first photo shows where we're going. This is the view from the garden fence, the exposed shingle at low tide is the best place to hunt. It's only a high low tide today, not a low low tide when more shingle is exposed. Before we moved here I didn't even know that the tides varied, other than low and high, but today's low tide is only 1.4m as opposed to 2.5m later in the month.

Here we are! Now it's *just* a case of eyeballing the shingle, best done from an undignified squat! We're looking for black fossil sharks teeth in a bed of black shingle. Easy peasy. When I spotted the first one I took a photo of it as I saw it, before I moved anything, but first I'll show you what you're looking for:

Now it's your turn to look for it! (You can enlarge the photo by clicking on it)

Got it yet? Same view, closer in:

It takes a while to get your eye in, as you can imagine. What usually catches my eye is the extreme sharpness or the straight edge. On the better examples there is a Y shaped root but we didn't find any like that today. If you can find the next one I'll be impressed! Here's what you're looking for:

And here's where I looked:

The fossil is towards the bottom, centre, in the photo above. Look for the round orange pebble

Spot it now?

In the next photo there is "something" pretty much in the centre. I don't know what it is, but it has regular lines that make me think it is a fossil rather than just a stone. I don't know though, do you?

 So these were today's finds. Not a huge crop, but we weren't out long, maybe half an hour.

Here's our total haul (so far), we moved here on March 1st but already had 4 of the 78 (!!) from an earlier hunt

These two are my favourites. The bigger one is - well - big! It shows the Y shape I mentioned earlier, that's the easiest thing to spot. The other one is ridiculously tiny, I don't know how I saw it!

We found the next fossil on our previous beach between Pett Level and Fairlight last year. The area was a river bed, and these are casts of tracks made by crustaceans (I think!)

We've also hunted at Folkestone, it's HORRIBLE underfoot, clambering over slippery boulders, but we persevered. Apparently the hunting is better if you work right at the cliff, but I'm not keen on danger! We found casts of ammonites and bits of ammonites:

 but my goodness we found lots!

On another day at our local beach MrNifty found this excellent piece of fossil wood embedded in a stone. It started to fall apart as soon as it dried, so I soaked it in yarn stiffener! did the job, probably not the obvious solution if you're not a knitter.

Last but not least - remember how paltry my seaglass collection was when last I showed you? 

It's grown!

Our new neighbourhood

Well, we've finally moved, the computer is back up and running and I've even started knitting again. Time to catch up, and as always you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

On Sunday (the day before we officially moved to Pett Level) we walked from Pett to Winchelsea along the Royal Military Canal, built way back when to defend the UK from Napolean Bonaparte. It was a glorious spring day with a brisk breeze - we were putting layers on and taking them off again all day!


The end is in sight - can you see the towers of Winchelsea Strand Gate on the horizon in the photo below? Years ago I took a series of photos starting here for my first website celebrating the Lone Pine Club books by Malcolm Saville. I should probably retake them now I have a better camera, they're a bit washed out!


The photo below is taken from the Strand Gate at Winchelsea, looking back across the canal and marshes to the sea. We had a quick pint in a pub garden, then headed back down the hill again to find the coast.


Yes, it's spring - lots of proud mums around!


The tide was out - we were very pleased to see so much sand, we'd thought we'd moved to a mostly shingly beach!


Nearly there (below). In the distance you can see Cliff End which is where we will leave the beach and turn right to head for our new home. Apparently there are many fossils to be discovered here at low tide, but we will have to time it correctly - it's 3 miles before the cliffs can be ascended again and I'm not that good a swimmer. Certainly not for today, at the end of a five mile walk.


One last photo... I was entranced by the beautiful designs (and I use the word deliberately) that the sea has drawn in the sand - isn't it wonderful?