rock & roll in Dorset

Hunt for ancient seashells and soaring views on the seashore.

Hunt for ancient seashells and soaring views on the seashore.

NOT A CHUCK Berry tribute weekend, but rocks (fossils) one day and roll(ercoaster) cliffs the other. The Jurassic Coast has both in spades and Charmouth near Lyme Regis is a hotspot, with its ammonite-rich beach out front and record-breaking cliff of Golden Cap to the east.

The tide might tip which way round you do your two walks as you need it low for fossicking for fossils, to maximise the shore to explore. Even better, chase the receding waves out to find the latest crop of wave-borne treasures, keeping a safe distance from the crumbling, slip-slide cliffs behind. The Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre (Fri-Mon in winter) is a great stop for fossil advice before you hit the beach. As well as the classic spirals of ammonites, this stretch is renowned for bullet-shaped belemnite guards and corkscrew crinoid stems, and you might even find vertebrae or jawbones from an ichthyosaur.

Switch micro for macro as you climb to the top of Golden Cap: the highest cliff on the entire southern coast of Britain. Follow the South West Coast Path out from Charmouth and it’s truly a rollercoaster, with one big dip and then a smaller one before the slow haul ( you can almost feel the engines grind) to the biggest of them all and the summit at 627 feet /191 metres above the sea. The panorama from this sandstone perch is vast, and while the waves and briny horizon are hypnotic, do take a turn to look inland before your clifftop ride back to Charmouth. You can retrace your steps out, or pick up a web of paths that runs a little to the north.