The journey

I set off on Saturday morning, 13 June. I first reached the train station at Axminster, and from there I took the bus (the X51 was running at that time, though there are others too). By around quarter to eleven I was in Lyme Regis. The festival had already begun and would finish the following afternoon.

On the beach

Stepping off the bus, I headed straight on, "head first", to look for fossils. The festival was a big event, but at that hour it was still early and things were only just getting going, and, most importantly, low tide was at eleven o'clock. The weather was thankfully lovely, and a little hot too.

I walked up and down the beach for two and a half hours. I was struck by how many ammonite fossils there were, and large ones too, no joke. Some of them must surely have measured fifty centimetres across. I should have expected it, of course, since Lyme Regis is home to the famous "ammonite pavement", a slab on the beach that is literally covered with large ammonites, which people walk over and tread on as a matter of course.

I had it in mind to find an ammonite, since until now I had no especially good ones from this area in my collection. My first find, though, in a pool left behind by the low tide, was a small piece of a star-shaped crinoid stem, the first of its kind to enter my collection. A reminder that fossil hunting is something unpredictable and thrilling!

In any case, after a good while I came across a large boulder that looked to have recently slid down from the cliffs. It should be noted that the cliffs, besides being off-limits for digging, are also dangerous to approach, since a landslide can happen at any moment. So I began to tap away at one edge of this boulder with my hammer, until a piece of the rock fell away. And at once my eyes saw exactly what they had been hoping for: a beautiful, complete ammonite preserved within the rock. Working slowly with the hammer, I freed it from the boulder, and around it others were revealed. After gathering five or six, I photographed them (in case some mishap befell them on the way home) and put them in my bag. I should have brought a newspaper to wrap them in, but I came unprepared.

Around midday I decided to call it a day with the fossils, partly because it was hot and I had grown tired, partly because I had found enough and would now have to lug them around all day, and partly because there was also a festival I had come to see.

The festival (Day one)

Heading back into the town, I saw that a crowd had gathered. Many were down on the beach, enjoying the fine weather. Collectors, artists, companies and specialists had come from all over England and set up tables, each exhibiting their own wares.

Polishing

I went first to a fossil-polishing workshop. I had brought along some belemnites of my own, but they told me they wouldn't work, perhaps the stone was too hard, I'm not sure. There we bought an ammonite and a nautilus, each cut in half. They told us they came from Ilminster. We first rubbed them on three grades of wet sandpaper, starting with the coarsest and finishing with the finest. At the end, some volunteers who were there finished the job for us using abrasive powder on a machine. The final result was a smooth, beautiful, polished surface that brings out the air chambers of the shell and other details of its internal structure. Though in the case of the ammonite I think the polishing wore away more than it revealed of anything that had been hidden.

Talk: "Fossil preparation"

After that there was a talk on fossil conservation, given by representatives of ZOIC PalaeoTech and of "Emanya fossil preparation & conservation". They spoke about the various methods of cleaning and conservation:

• mechanical methods
  • with engraving pens, either electric or air-powered (with a compressor)
  • with small chisels
  • with sandblasting (air abrasion), using grains of various sizes depending on the hardness of the fossil and of the rock
• chemical methods
• conservation with Paraloid B-72 (in the relevant article in the journal, the Paraloid I used was the one I had bought from ZOIC)

They also mentioned "pyrite disease", which destroys pyritic fossils. It is a chemical reaction that occurs when pyrite meets the atmosphere (oxygen, if I remember correctly?) under conditions of high humidity. The best way to avoid it, from what they said, is to let the fossils dry out completely (possibly for months or more) before they are stored away.

Emanya also showed us a Devonian fish that was nearly finished. It was very beautiful, but unfortunately I did not photograph it. He said it had taken 108 hours of work to clean it to the state it was in.

Food and rest

After that we went and ate at the Rock Point Inn. Their seafood was very good, and I also had to keep an eye on the seagulls in case they launched a commando raid on us! We wandered around a little more and in the end caught the bus back to Charmouth, where we were staying. We also took an evening walk along Charmouth beach, but I found nothing there.

The festival (Day two)

We went to Lyme Regis early, as we wanted to have breakfast before the talk we were due to attend. We found a café (The Galley Café) and ate there: a classic English fry-up with bacon, eggs and tinned beans.

Talk: "The Spinosaurs - ecology and controversy"

At half past ten there was a talk at the Marine Theatre about spinosaurs and the contested question of how much time they spent in the water and, more importantly, how they spent it: how they fed, whether they could swim, and so on. The talk was titled "The Spinosaurs - ecology and controversy", and the speaker was Dr Dave Hone of Queen Mary University of London. He spoke about the history of the genus and the various conjectures and theories that have grown up around this animal. He focused on recent research and discoveries, some supporting a fully aquatic way of life and others not, and he defended the view that the anatomy of Spinosaurus is not ideal for active swimming, and that there is probably evidence suggesting it fed, and likely behaved, more like a heron than like a crocodile or other aquatic predator.

It was the first time I had attended a live talk on a palaeontological subject, and I must say it did not disappoint. Although I had heard a fair amount of what was said before, much of it was new to me. And simply being in a hall full of so many people who share the same "bug" was a wonderful feeling!

Treasure hunt around the town

As part of the festival, anyone could take part in a "treasure hunt" through the town, in which you had to wander from one shop to another (clothes, souvenirs, toys, food...) and find a hidden letter in each. In the end these spelled out a word, which you had to hand in at the festival's information centre to enter a prize draw. I'm not sure exactly what the prizes are, festival souvenirs I think: caps, t-shirts and the like. We'll find out if we won!

Talk: "The Yorkshire fossil hunter"

Mark Kemp (trading as "The Yorkshire fossil hunter") is a former engineer who gave it up about a decade ago to work professionally with fossils, which had long been his passion. He spoke about how he got started without any formal training as a palaeontologist or geologist, by collecting, cleaning and conserving the fossils of his own area, on the Holderness coast in Yorkshire. Once he began doing this professionally, he also started taking people, young and old, schools and students, out on fossil tours and into his workshop. It was an interesting glimpse of how someone managed to turn what he loved into a profession and a way of life.

End of the day and the journey back

After that we ate some sandwiches at The Bagel Shop (very tasty, though a touch small) and wandered the town a little more. I also bought a festival t-shirt as a memento. There were various things that caught my eye, among them:

• A little robot (it struck me as being like those Boston Dynamics robot-dogs) dressed as an ankylosaurus, going around and being shown off to visitors.
• A "board game" called "how to become a fossil: the hardest game". You started off as an animal (there was a fish, a crab and a worm) and rolled a die. There were a great many obstacles along the way (e.g. another animal ate you), and most rolls you lost. The chap there told us that only one person had reached the fossil stage in the whole festival, and that the odds of something becoming a fossil are less than 0.001%.
• I bought a "fossil preparation starter kit" for £50 from ZOIC. It is an electric engraving pen (Dremel 290) with their own finer tips, better suited to cleaning fossils. We'll see what we manage to do with it.
• Around four o'clock the town band struck up in the square by the sea. It was a lovely way to round off the day.

Finally, at around five, we caught the last bus to Axminster station. It had been a lovely weekend in the picturesque little town of Lyme Regis. In the words of someone else I overheard, it was like the Disneyland of fossils!