Monday 24th December

We left the hotel and walked along the seafront to the west, hoping to get to onto the beach to look for fossils, but at the end of the concrete walkway the tide was too high, so we turned back. We drove to Charmouth, and walked back along the beach there towards Lyme Regis. There were some other fossil hunters out. We found lots of belemnite bits and some ammonite fragments.

J walked up the hill and looked at the view.
We drove to Topsham to meet Sibyl and Derek for lunch at the Lighter Inn. The pub was full, so we walked around Topsham looking for somewhere for lunch, eventually finding the nearly-empty Lord Nelson (‘Craft Ales, Street Food, Live Music’) where the food and beer was fine.
After lunch we followed the walkway around the water edge. The tide was out so the birds were distant. We saw avocets, lapwings, redshanks, black-tailed godwits, curlews, grey plovers. Further on on Bowling green Marshes there were lots of teal and wigeon, and shovellers, snipe, heron.
We got to the Mill End Hotel, near Chagford, around 16:30.

Drinks at 6pm were followed by a ‘tasting menu’ with rather too much food at each course.