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Walking the Jurassic Coast
the walks, the rocks, the fossilspaperback: 174 x 117mm also available as ebook at same price
full colour pictures and sketch maps
Cicerone 2015: £13: ISBN 978 1 85284 741 8
Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild Awards 2015: Best Guidebook
The Jurassic Coast gives cliff and downland walks short enough for a lazy day on the beach, or if you like, as long and strenuous as anything on UK hills. With the bonus of English Riviera weather and a swim in the sea.
But on this World Heritage coastline named after a 60-million-year span of geology, the enjoyable walking is only half the story. Pause along the way to spot the ammonites of Lyme Regis, the fossil forest of Lulworth Cove, the one-time red desert of Budleigh Salterton.
Boots and bikini; science, or a set of swimming trunks. Along the Dorset Devon coast, you can walk it either way.
• 30 routes between Exmouth and Swanage
• includes selected inland walks on Dorset downland
• geology sites marked on walk maps
• fossils, rock forms etc pictured, and explained in non-technical language
• time charts, cliff diagrams with rock types, strata diagrams
extracts, sample route or two, contents listing and some pictures on the Cicerone Press website
most of the Introduction on the Cicerone Press Blog
reviews
This 240-page book - the first - 2015 - edition is a colourful, detailed and READABLE guide to walking the Jurassic Coast of Dorset and East Devon. It is a small (6 3/4 by 4 1/2 inch) book, with superb full-colour maps and photos on almost every page. It describes 30 detailed circular walks (i.e. you end up back where you started from), with the relevant sections of the Ordnance Survey map (reproduced here bigger than it appears the OS sheet for ease of reading) for each walk, and with photographs taken on the route, showing you highlights of what to see along the way. There are also directions for short-cuts or alternative routes provided, and a running commentary on what you can see (or what you can go and see if you take "the path back right, signed for Sutton Poyntz" for example).Note that, as well as the scenic views from these walks, this book is very focused on the geology of this region, and is subtitled "Dorset and East Devon: the walks, the rocks and the fossils" for a reason. Each walk's chapter contains details of the rocks and fossils to be seen (and found) as you go, as well as text boxes containing detailed descriptions of features and history.
This really is a superb guide; and if you can't take the journey in person, you can just read it for enjoyment.
50 Squirrels of Grey (the book's first reviewer on Amazon)