This was almost certainly the first World Heritage Site I ever visited, on a family holiday to Devon aged two. Therefore, I have always ticked it off on my list despite having no memory of it and so, decades later, sought to rectify that. This is the only natural site in Britain as things stand, although Scotland’s Flow Country looks set to be nominated in the coming years and the UK has other natural sites at Giant’s Causeway in Ireland and many others spread across its overseas territories. It technically consists of eight separate sites although they are all contiguous across a core zone that stretches 155 kilometres from Orcombe Rocks in the west to Old Harry Rocks in the east although there are gaps for the towns of Sidmouth, Seaton, Lyme Regis, West Bay, Weymouth, and Swanage. In terms of public transport, trains can be taken to Exmouth and Weymouth with a heritage service also running to Swanage, from all of which it is a short walk into the inscribed areas. The more famous sites like Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove are more rural so you will have to rely on a likely irregular bus service or find your own transportation.

With this being a coastal site, I thought that a boat trip would be the best way to see the site. However, it was not until afterwards I realised that the official maps seem to show the core zone is entirely on land so, if you feel like you need to set foot in a site to count it as visited, beware. Boats run from Poole around the eastern extreme of the site and there appear to be some limited options in Weymouth but I opted for Stuart Line Cruises, operating out of Exmouth on the far western end. It was a bright sunny day, just a few days before the UK set a new all-time high temperature record on 19th July 2022 breaching 40 °C for the first time ever. The boat took us out of the marina at the mouth of the estuary of the River Exe along the seafront then past the first of many Triassic sandstone cliffs. On top of the first of these is the Geoneedle, a sculpture from 2002 constructed from the many different types of stone found along the coast to commemorate the site’s inscription. We then passed beneath a Royal Marine firing range, thankfully not in use and so allowing us to safely pass close to the cliffs without risk of stray bullets from new recruits. Continuing eastwards, we had perhaps too good a view of one of the UK’s largest nudist beaches next to the town of Budleigh Salterton before reaching the impressive sea stacks of Ladram Bay (pictured attached) after a little over an hour then returning back along the same route. By the time we returned, the tide had gone out sufficiently that, whilst we had boarded the lower deck, we disembarked from the upper deck. The views were excellent with a good range of refreshments and the on-board commentary was informative although I would have liked some more geological details.

Whilst the bright orange rocks with their myriad structures are indeed aesthetically pleasing, this coastline is not inscribed on the basis of its beauty but just on criteria (viii): “representing major stages of earth's history”. Despite being known colloquially as the ‘Jurassic Coast’, there are rocks from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous on display. The cliffs of east Devon consist primarily of Triassic sandstone whereas, heading east into Dorset, Jurassic clays and shales predominate along with the famous Portland limestone, which was used in the construction of the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, and the UN Headquarters in New York, amongst many other renowned buildings. All along the coast are literally textbook examples from your high school geography class of coastal landforms – cliffs, headlands, sea stacks, arches, beaches, bays, coves, spits, tombolos, lagoons, and salt marshes. Starting in 1811 with the discovery of ichthyosaur fossils by Mary Anning from Lyme Regis, the site has produced an enormous array of fossils that kickstarted 19th Century Britain’s dinosaur mania, a phenomenon that continues in children (and some adults) to this day, and informed much academic study in the field. Sailing just a small portion of this coast, its ongoing geological development is clearly visible with distinctly defined layers of rock dating back over 200 million years to when the sediment was deposited in the Triassic era through to evidence of landslides from just a couple of years ago. Whilst not as iconic to the nation as the White Cliffs of Dover further to the east, I would say that the Dorset and East Devon Coast is more influential to our science and culture and certainly more interesting to visit.