It’s an easy walk to West Bay to check out the famous Harbour Cliff and the spectacular coastline. The cliff is just one landmark along the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that stretches for 153 kilometres through East Devon and Dorset counties. It’s thought to be the world’s finest record of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Collectively, those periods make up the Mesozoic Era, which began some 250 million years ago, when giant reptiles and dinosaurs walked the earth. (Another important Mesozoic site is Canada’s own Dinosaur Provincial Park near Calgary.)

At West Bay, I saw piled up on the shore some large rocks featuring what I later learned were chondrites, trace fossils that look like plant roots but are actually branched tunnel systems, possibly created by an ancient seafloor-dwelling organism. They also resemble—and some actually are—the footprints of prehistoric birds.

One fascinating figure to emerge from this region was Mary Anning, who was born in nearby Lyme Regis in 1799 and died in 1847. She was a fossil hunter who scoured these stretches of coastline and is widely credited with a major discovery at the age of only 12: after her younger brother found what appeared to be a fossilized crocodile skull, Mary unearthed a complete skeleton more than five metres in length. Scientists called the creature Ichthyosaurus, meaning “fish lizard” — though today we know ichthyosaurs were actually marine reptiles that lived during the Mesozoic era.

At the time, the theory of extinction had only recently been introduced, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species wouldn’t be published for some 50 years. Anning made her living selling the fossils she found to museums and collectors but, being female at a time when women weren’t supposed to be scientists, she rarely got credit for her finds. Today, several of Anning’s fossils, including her ichythosaur, have pride of place in the Fossil Marine Reptiles gallery at the Natural History Museum in London. (If you’re interested in learning more about Anning, the 2009 historical fiction novel Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier brings her to life.)

From West Bay, I headed west along the green, sheep-studded walking path high above the beach, passing Thornecombe Beacon, one of a network of warning beacons first built in the 16th century to protect England’s shores from the dreaded Spanish Armada. I ended my day at The Anchor Inn pub at an inlet called Seatown, where I grabbed a picnic table by the shore and enjoyed the day’s special—fish and chips, naturally—as the waves crashed in. 

The next day, I continued west in my rental car to historic Exeter, a small city on the River Exe. Living history is everywhere here, too, including at the Hotel du Vin near the city centre where I was given a lovely corner room in what was formerly the West of England Eye Infirmary. Built in 1899, it’s 100 per cent red-brick Victorian on the outside (and includes a pretty walled garden out back), but thoroughly boutique-modern inside, down to the large, whimsical breakfast room, which is brightened by multiple pendant lights and chic red-leather chairs.