How do you drag kids away from their social media lives without annoying them? That’s a question that lots of parents must wrestle with these days, but thankfully it’s one I don’t have to, but if I did, I think that I would take them for a day out to somewhere like Charmouth.

As a kid, I always enjoyed rummaging around in rockpools seeing what I could find, and I also remember my first project at school was about dinosaurs and early life on earth; here at Charmouth, you can have the best of both worlds because there’s no better place in the country to go fossil hunting, and judging from the number of families who come here, it seems like I’m not the only one who finds this an enjoyable and stimulating day out.

The Dorset and East Devon coastline has been given World Heritage Status by UNESCO and is widely known as the Jurassic Coast. In actual fact, the 95 miles of coastline between Exmouth and Old Harry Rocks in Purbeck covers three different periods of Earth’s history – from the Triassic Period (250-200 million years ago) through the Jurassic Period (200-140m) to the Cretacious Period (140-65m) – a total of 185 million years.

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Originally posted 2019-04-06 15:53:18.