The Julers' Trips and Adventures: IOW 2020

The summation of today is a message in a "bootle".

A few weeks back we made the decision that, unless a direct Covid-19 measure came in preventing us from travelling, we were going to go ahead with this holiday and the first thing we wanted to book was a fossil hunting trip. With all group tours cancelled due to the lack of possible social distancing, we looked into a private tour and Wight Coast Fossils seemed to come up as recommended in a few places so we decided to give them a go. Thankfully they had a slot available for the day we wanted, so we booked that in and also got onto buying Forrest an early birthday present of a fossil hunting bag and kit.

After a long day yesterday an easy morning and English breakfast brunch was much enjoyed, although the kids were starting to get a bit over-excited by the time it came to departure. Forrest loved his fossil hunting bag and couldn’t wait to get out and find things to put in it. There was just one problem. The British weather! All morning it had been torrentially raining but trusting the weather radar that was saying the worst would pass by 12 o’clock, the same time as the start of our tour, we headed out with the car loaded up with puddle suits and rain coats. We arrived at the meeting point with the rain still hammering down and not much sign of the beach as the strong winds were pushing the waves further inland. After a chat with our guide, Theo, we decided to hold off for half an hour and let the waters recede a bit further.

Whilst this was a good decision in regards to the weather, as it did indeed ease off slightly, it was not so good for the kids who by now were clambering round the car desperate to get out. Once on the beach, Theo gave us a brief introduction of the history of this part of the coast and showed us some examples of what we should be looking for. The first thing we found though was not on this list as Matt recovered a message in a bottle washed up on the beach, not just a first for us but for our guide as well. We stashed it safely away to open later and moved on with the fossil hunt. Forrest initially showed good interest in hunting for the various fossil pieces although he was easily distracted by the novelty of being on a beach and the crashing waves. After five minutes it was pretty clear that even wellies instead of his walking boots would not have kept his feet dry as he ran into the water for the fifteen millionth time. Paloma was just happy picking up random stones that she liked the look of and taking every opportunity to play in the wet sand whenever we paused to look at something.

A message in a "Bootle" with Forrest splashing in the sea!

After finding a few fossilised sponges, coprolite (poo), fossil wood with fools gold, fish and oysters among the pebbly stretch of beach we then reached the highlight of the day, the dinosaur footprints. I was amazed by the size of the footprints and how clearly they were defined. We saw lots of Iguanodon footprints, an unidentified theropod footprint (probably either Baryonyx or Neovenator), a sauropod footprint (I missed who this belonged to) and a Polacanthus footprint.

Forrest with a large Polacanthus footprint.

A baby Iguanodon footprint inside an adult footprint.

Whilst we never found that elusive dinosaur bone, Forrest was happy with his haul of fossils and excited to see what the message in the bottle revealed. It wasn’t quite as successful a trip as I had envisioned with the distractions of the environment proving too much for the little man at times but Theo was a really great guide and incredibly patient with the kids as well as being extremely informative.

Paloma on the beach, times two!

Kids playing in the chine.

Kids still playing in the chine!

After getting back we cleaned down all of our rain soaked and sand covered clothes before finally revealing what the bottle held. The bottle hadn't been at sea that long, released on the 3rd October but had made it all the way from Penzance and we will be contacting 11 year old Merryn to let her know where her bottle turned up.

The message, from an 11 year old girl in Cornwell.

With the delayed walk and clean up, time had quickly flown by and our plans of exploring The Needles didn’t seem achievable but with the skys clearing we thought the chance of a pretty sunset was high and so a quick drive later we stood on the extremely blustery Alum Bay cliffs overlooking the aforementioned landmark to watch the sun go down on another busy day.