After a rainy night under canvas, sharing a shower with a spider we enjoy a delicious full English breakfast in Lyme Regis. Chat to the nice lady in the tourist information who advises us it is safe to walk along the beach between Charmouth and Lyme Regis at low tide. We take the bus to Charmouth and wander down from the town to the beach. The weather is dire, considering its midsummer – drizzling rain and a bit of a breeze, but we are dressed for the occasion.

We’re not sure if the tide is out far enough yet so we wander round the fossil shop and information centre which, to my surprise, is quite fascinating. Then it’s time to head for the beach, put our hoods up and wander along with the sea to our left and the muddy looking low cliffs to our right. There are plentiful fossil hunters hunting for the next big find as the tide is slipping away. The clouds are hanging literally right above us with the view onto Lyme very muggy.

We find ourselves scouring the beach, as we walk, for fossils and find some very pretty stones – emerald green in colour, grey with bright white stripes through the middle, shiny pieces of glass shaped into pebbles and the obligatory pebbles with a hole.

As Lyme Regis becomes ever closer the fossil hunters are more and more plentiful, having presumably walked from Lyme rather than Charmouth. Young boys shout “look at this one”, but the majority of people are older, dressed for the occasion and looking as if they have done this many times before.

Arriving on East Beach Lyme, the pebbles turn to large flag boulders with plentiful rock pools full of seaweed and I’m sure crabs and other swimming things. Carefully stepping across we are pleased to find they are not slimy and slippy, we wander up the steps to the promenade and towards Lyme Regis town centre.

The seafront is very appealing and quite short, passing a theatre, a small quayside and Victorian properties right on the seafront – I bet they keep their sandbags to the ready. The houses soon turn to very tempting restaurants, pubs and food kiosks before the prom curls round passed the RNLI shop and boathouse and onto the Cobb.

Immortalised in the French Lieutenants Woman, the Cobb is a perfect little harbour full of boats with fishing tackle lying around, and such pretty views looking across to Beer and back to Charmouth and beyond. The tide is out, the boats are flopped on the sand rather than bobbing in the water, the sun is yet to shine but it is still very picturesque.

We return to the promenade for possibly the best ice cream I’ve had in many many years – I go for salted caramel – Baboo Gelato certainly know how to make ice cream 