Budleigh Past and Present

Click on the image to make it bigger. The science behind the verse will be explained in a forthcoming post! 

I’ll be posting from time to time my thoughts about the Jurassic Coast, having just accepted an invitation from Guy Kerr, Community Coordinator for the Jurassic Coast Team to become one of the Coast's Ambassadors.  More information can be found about that at http://jurassiccoast.org Just after I've accepted the invitation my dear daughter Rosie tells me that she is going to run a half marathon dressed as a dinosaur for Macmillan. So I suppose that makes a sort of sense. There will be pics to prove it. If you can spare a few quid please sponsor me she asks.   https://www.justgiving.com/rosie-downes1/ Go on! It’s a worthy cause and it’ll prove to my children that people do read my blog.           

Guy Kerr, left, with OVA Chairman Roger Saunders at Fairlynch Museum  You may have noticed that Fairlynch Museum changed its logo some time ago. We thought a dash of colour was needed, and that  Mediterranean shade of blue seemed just right.  Those Budleigh pebbles form an important part of our geological display. And of course we are the only thatched museum on Devon’s World Heritage Coast… Hence the recent visit to Budleigh by Guy Kerr, who was appointed as Jurassic Coast Trust Community Coordinator last year. Roger Saunders, Chairman of the Otter Valley Association, and I met up with him at Fairlynch to find out more about his role.  Q: You work for the Jurassic Coast Trust? Can you tell us something about it? GK: We’re an independent registered charity which supports the delivery of science, conservation, arts, education and sustainable development programmes along the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. Q: And your job? GK: My j...

                                You might think that this is a rather fine photo I’ve taken but just wait until March next year when fossils like this from Fairlynch’s collection will be viewable in the sort of truly amazing detail that makes my efforts look rather amateurish.                                                 This particular one, which caught the eye of Jurassic Coast Earth Science Manager Richard Edmonds, seen above, will even be rotatable in 3D and seen by audiences around the world thanks to the technological marvels of digital photography. It’s a fossilised bivalve like a clam or an oyster of the type Myophorella and was found in the cliffs at Osmington Mills on the coast...