One Young Fool in Dorset Read Online Free PDF Page A

birds
and wildlife.
    Oh, the joy of living along the Jurassic coastline
where fossils revealed themselves as though clamouring for
attention. We often visited Kimmeridge Bay. The village of
Kimmeridge is tiny and very picturesque. The estimated population
in 2013 was just 90. But Kimmeridge is well worth a visit for two
good reasons, both of which I loved as a child.
    First, it had an awesome folly. Perched precariously
on the cliff edge and overlooking the semi-circular bay, was the
folly known as Clavell Tower, which inspired P.D. James’s novel, The Black Tower .
    Who built it, and why? I didn’t know. I imagine the
person who built it thought it would stand proudly for ever.
Indeed, there used to be space for horse-drawn carriages to drive
on the strip of land between folly and cliff edge. But the cliff
was constantly being eroded by the weather and the sea below. The
folly was now mere feet away from the edge of the cliff and in real
danger of collapsing into the waves beneath. Every time we visited
the bay, I checked to see whether the folly was still standing, or
had collapsed into its inevitable watery grave.
    Clavell Tower as
it was
    To my astonishment, I recently learned that the
folly survived for many more years. Finally, in 2006, it was taken
over by the Landmark Trust which rescues eccentric buildings and
converts them into holiday homes. They dismantled Clavell Tower and
re-erected it on a firmer foundation 82 feet further inland.
    Now it looks almost the same as it did when I was a
child, except that it’s no longer ruined, or in danger, and boasts
a stunning interior with four floors of beautifully styled rooms. I
imagine a few days’ stay in this spectacular building, surrounded
by breath-taking views, with the waves breaking beneath the cliffs,
would make a truly unforgettable holiday.
    The second attraction for me was fossils. The shale
at Kimmeridge is soft and constantly crumbling, making the finding
of ammonites easy.
    “I’ve found one!”
    “Me too!”
    “And me!”
    Ammonites, with their characteristic ribbed, spiral
shell are probably the most widely known fossil. These creatures
lived in our seas some 240 million years ago, before they became
extinct along with the dinosaurs. It was awesome to uncover such an
ancient thing. The windowsill in my bedroom became cluttered with
the ammonite fossils I had found. I could never bear to part with
them, and I know they came with me when I moved to Spain forty
years later. I haven’t seen them for a long time; perhaps they are
languishing in a box somewhere. Perhaps some future fossil hunter
may come across them in decades to come and wonder how Dorset
fossils could possibly be found in the mountains of southern
Spain.
    But sometimes we visited beaches simply because they
were beautiful. Durdle Door is a perfect example of a stunning
setting, and often used in films, including the unforgettable Far From the Madding Crowd .
    Durdle
Door
    But my very favourite beach was much more ordinary,
or so I thought when we first started visiting it.
    My mother didn’t enjoy driving. She refused to drive
any car at all, even though she had passed her driving test many
years earlier. Then one day, my father came home with an old
ex-army Land Rover. It had a torn canvas roof that was rolled back
and tied at various points.
    “Get in,” he said handing her the ignition key.
“Turn the engine on, see how it feels.”
    “ Ach, this is not so bad,” she said. “I feel
high, much safer than an ordinary car. If I scratch it, it wouldn’t
really matter, would it? And I like that the engine is loud because
I can hear what I’m doing.”
    She crunched the gears to demonstrate. My father
winced.
    The Land Rover had seen better days and was badly in
need of a coat of paint, so my mother bought some and opened the
lid. She peered at it, then dipped in her paintbrush.
    “This is supposed to be dark green!” she said, as
she began painting. “Ach, never mind. It’s