August
is holiday time, but first it's James' birthday. To
celebrate, he decided to take a few friends to one of
his favourite local places, the Natural
History Museum at Tring. The museum used to be the
private collection of Lionel Walter Rothschild, who
left it to the NHM when he died. It's a great collection
in a fabulous Victorian building, and it benefits from
being part of the larger NHM. James made up his own
activity sheet for his guests, and we rounded it off
with a picnic lunch in the function room. This year's
birthday cake challenge was one of the animal specimens
at the museum, a glyptodont.
This was a large armadillo-shaped creature which became
extinct 10,000 years ago.
Malcolm
and Matthew had a lad's trip on the train to Birmingham,
taking in the Sea
Life Centre, a canal
boat trip and the Think
Tank (including the excellent planetarium), with
an overnight stop at Jury's
Inn. When asked which bit Matthew enjoyed most,
he said "All of it". Sometimes he is very
easy to please .
For
our main holiday this year we decided not to go too
far afield. James wanted to go fossil hunting, so
we built the holiday around visits to the prime UK
fossil areas of the Isle of Wight and Lyme Regis.
We
started with a few days at Malcolm's mum's in Salisbury,
and included a trip to Longleat,
subject of the BBC "Animal Park" series.
We decided to save the tickets to the house for later
in the year, but went on the safari park drive, pet's
corner, boat trip and miniature train ride. Quite
a full day!
We
based the next part of our holiday in Gosport. Just
a five-minute ferry
trip away is Portsmouth, a vibrant port and major
tourist spot with its historic
dockyard. We were fortunate in seeing all of the
Royal
Navy's aircraft carriers. Our favourite (complete)
"old ship" was the Warrior, younger than the
more famous Victory but more spacious, and with better
tour guides. The Mary Rose was mind blowing - like a
view from the Tardis.
We
dedicated one day to visit the Isle of Wight, which
is delightfully easy and quick to get to from Gosport.
It did involve a bus, a ferry, the FastCat,
a train
and another bus to get to Sandown, but with a promt
start we found ourselves drinking coffe in the warm
sun on Sandown beach by 9.30.
The
main destination was the Dinosaur
Isle museum, where we also went on a fossil hunt
along the beach. With a large party on the fossil
hunt we didn't get too much prime information, although
we did find some rather nice fossilised snails.
But
we saved the best to last this holiday, and that was
Lyme Regis. Made famous by Mary
Anning who discovered ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and
iguanodon fossils in the area, Lyme is still a place
for the amateur to make new finds. We enlisted the help
of Paddy Howe, geologist at the Philpot
Museum, and spent a fascinating if rather wet afternoon
uncovering amonites, belemnites, coprolite (fossilised
dung), and a small ichthyosaur vertebra. It was great
to have exclusive access to such an enthusiastic and
friendly expert for the afternoon, and meant we both
found and learned a lot more than on the Isle of Wight
trip.
