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LYME REGIS , Dorset's most westerly town, shelters snugly between steep hills, just before the grey, fossil-filled cliffs lurch into Devon. Its intimate size and undeniable photogenic qualities mean that in high summer car-borne crowds jostle with pedestrians for the limited space along Lyme's narrow streets. For all that, the town lives up to the classy impression created by its regal name, which it owes to a royal charter granted by Edward I in 1284. It has some upmarket literary associations to further bolster its self-esteem - Jane Austen penned Persuasion in a seafront cottage here, while novelist John Fowles is the town's most famous current resident; but it was the film adaptation of his book, The French Lieutenant's Woman , shot on location here, that did more than any tourist board production ever could to place the resort firmly on the map. Colourwashed cottages and elegant Regency and Victorian villas line the seafront and flanking streets, but Lyme's best-known feature is a briskly practical reminder of its commercial origins. The Cobb , the curving harbour wall, was first constructed in the thirteenth century but has suffered many alterations since, most notably in the nineteenth century, when its massive boulders were clad in neater blocks of Portland stone. As you walk along the seafront and out towards The Cobb, look for the outlines of ammonites in the walls and paving stones. The cliffs around Lyme are made up of complex layers of limestone, greensand and unstable clay, a perfect medium for preserving fossils, which are exposed by landslips of the waterlogged clays. In 1811, after a fierce storm caused parts of the cliffs to collapse, 12-year-old Mary Anning, a keen fossil-hunter, discovered an almost complete dinosaur skeleton, a 30-foot ichthyosaurus now displayed in London's Natural History Museum. Hammering fossils out of the cliffs is frowned on by today's conservationists, and in any case is rather hazardous. Hands-off inspection of the area's complex geology can be enjoyed on both sides of town: to the west lies the Undercliff , a fascinating jumble of overgrown landslips, now a nature reserve. East of Lyme, the Dorset Coast Path is closed as far as jaded Charmouth (Jane Austen's favourite resort), but at low tide you can walk for two miles along the beach, then, just past Charmouth, rejoin the coastal path to the headland of Golden Cap , whose brilliant outcrop of auburn sandstone is crowned with gorse. Lyme's excellent Philpot Museum on Bridge Street (April-Oct Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 11am-5pm; Nov-March Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 11am-5pm, also open Christmas & school half-terms at same times; GBP1.50) provides a crash course in local history and geology, while Dinosaurland on Coombe Street (daily: Aug 10am-6pm; rest of year 10am-5pm; GBP3.50) fills out the story on ammonites and other local fossils. Also worth seeing is the small marine aquarium on The Cobb (Easter-Oct 10am-5pm, with later closing in July & Aug; GBP2), where local fishermen bring unusual catches, and the fifteenth-century parish church of St Michael the Archangel, up Church Street, which contains a seventeenth-century pulpit and a massive chained Bible.
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