20 Best Beaches in the World

Lyme Regis, England

Budding paleontologists and casual shellers love the spiral-shaped ammonites and fossil remains of 180-million-year-old sea creatures found embedded in the rock and sand of England’s Jurassic Coast. The Lyme Regis Museum leads guided fossil walks, and May’s annual fossil festival fetes earth sciences with plays, music, and hands-on exhibits.

Lyme Regis is a coastal town in West Dorset, England, situated 25 miles (40 km) west of Dorchester and 25 miles (40 km) east of Exeter. The town lies in Lyme Bay, on the English Channel coast at the Dorset–Devon border. It is nicknamed “The Pearl of Dorset.” The town is noted for the fossils found in the cliffs and beaches, which are part of the Heritage Coast—known commercially as the Jurassic Coast—a World Heritage Site.

The harbour wall, known as “The Cobb”, features in Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion, and in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a novel by British writer John Fowles, as well as the 1981 film of the same name, which was partly filmed in Lyme Regis.

The town was home to Admiral Sir George Somers, its one-time mayor and parliamentarian. He founded the English colonial settlement of the Somers Isles, better known as Bermuda. Lyme Regis is twinned with St. George’s, Bermuda. In July 2015 Lyme Regis was also ‘tripled’ with Jamestown, Virginia to form the Historic Atlantic Triangle between Lyme, St George’s and Jamestown.

In the 2011 Census the town’s parish and the electoral ward had a population of 3,671.