Fossil hunting in Durdle Door, England - an attempt

As a child I collected seashells (which alarmingly back then also included corals - thank gooness that doesn't happen any more!). And spent many a summer on the Isle of Wight - which is chock-full-o-fossils.

I've always loved nature, I guess - now working at ZSL London Zoo, I'm famously the only weirdo in the office more interested in the bee species flying around the Zoo than the large mammals on show. And proudly so.

My unloved wide angle camera lenses got a real run for their money with this breathtaking scenery.

 A trip to UNESCO world heritage site Durdle Door, on the southern Jurassic Coast of England, seemed right up my alley. Foraging for hundreds-of-millions-of-years-old remnants of aquatic creatures against a backdrop of night skies glittering with stars away from light pollution? It wasn't a hard ask.

I love seeing England anyway. I'm not enamoured by sweaty sunburnt trips abroad.

We booked 5 nights at a camping pod (even the park owners seemed surprised by that decision) with nothing but a few books, a chess set, my camera and of course each other, to keep ourselves amused of an evening.

Venturing south in October meant we pretty much had the park to ourselves

It was fantastic. Upon arrival we couldn't wait to make the short (but incredibly steep) hike down to the beach to see what we could find.

The beach is filled with rocks to investigate

We spent several hours in our wellies bashing through chunks of chalk on the beach, picking up pebbles and chucking them back. By the time the tide turned to come in, we'd found nothing.

Or at least, we thought we hadn't.

Several days after returning, we had a squiz round Google and found that the markings on nearly every stone we found were indicative of treasured trilobites within. If only we'd bothered to look at how to find fossils before we went.

It's our style to chance things, and I've since found a fabulous forager on eBay who knows what she is doing. Thankfully she is a frequent finder and is able to supply me for my handmade fossil jewellery. Sadly the vision of my finding my own, was short-lived!

This Jurassic Coast fossil had a small hole at the centre which I plugged with an emerald Swarovski crystal.

You should know that there are plenty of tours on offer with fossil-finding experts while you're down on the Jurassic Coast. While I haven't tried one, anything has got to be better than the nothingness we experienced! Give it a go. We had fun regardless but it would be all the more rewarding to actually come back with a find!