A Lovely Day in Dorset with Mary

Quite a lovely, albeit, tiring day in Dorset today. I had been looking forward to spending a whole day just with Mary as I seem to spend quite a number of complete days with Tom but not with my daughter. After a late breakfast, we drove down to Dorchester via Blandford. En route we were delayed by a jack-knifed lorry on the A354 but, nevertheless, arrived in Dorchester at noon. We parked the car easily by the military museum and walked along the High Street to the Tutankhamun Exhibition/Museum where we spent about an hour and a half looking at the exhibits and completing the children's quiz. We briefly visited the Dorset County Museum to get a couple of small booklets on the fossils of Dorset followed by a light lunch in a little cafe off the main street. We returned to the Tutankhamun museum to make a few little purchase sin the shop before going back to the car and driving the twenty miles or so to Charmouth to investigate the fossils there. Parking the car near to the beach, we walked along to Stonebarrow and there spent about two hours sifting through the scree of the Jurassic sedimentary rocks to find quite a number of small ammonites. We also bought a couple of well formed ammonites and a belemnite in the shop by the heritage centre. We set off for Poole at about 6 p.m. stopping at the excellent fish and chip shop I know in Dorchester where we shared a haddock and chips. Whilst eating them there was a torrential rainstorm with the rain pounding off the car as we munched on our fishy supper. We arrived at Poole Stadium at about 7.30 p.m. just in time for the second greyhound race of the evening. We spent about two hours at the greyhound track. I had a small win (£5.50) and Mary had a couple of near-misses. We left at 9.30 p.m. after the tenth race and arrived back home at 11 p.m. having had to make a diversion around Plaitford due to the closure of the A36 for what appeared to be line drawing works. A really great day out and quite packed with educational activities.