Tag: dailyprompt-2121

Quarter of a large ammonite on a beach

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What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

From near Whitby.

The blue lias cliffs near Whitby in North East Yorkshire are full of fossils. The cliffs are very crumbly and made of a grey clay peppered with rocks and stones and things like Whitby Jet (fossilised Monkey Puzzle Tree).

One year we were on holiday and decided to walk along the pebbly beach. But parts of the cliffs had crumbled following winter storms and the debris was about 10 foot high and had fallen in large piles onto the stone and rock below.

On the first pile slightly embedded in the clay was a large rock about a12 to 18 inches across. It was roughly the size of a large quarter of a pie, and on its surface was the ribbed outline of a large ammonite.

We hid it under a bush and headed along the beach over the temporary headlands of clay. Walking up and over the landslips we managed to go about half a mile when we decided to climb up onto the coastal path because the tide was coming in!

I was quite scared, I’m not a climber, and as I looked down into the cracked surface I could see down into the interior of the material. Some cracks went all the way down to the beach. But I slowly got up the the top and then we walked back.

We found the ammonite again undisturbed. I took it home. I have other fossils but this is my favourite.

An olympus trip camera

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What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

Hubby and I were cycling along on our tandem in the middle of the countryside. We were passing through farmland one spring when he suddenly braked to a stop. He had seen a camera in the ditch next to the road on a clump of grass. We think it must have fallen off the top of a car?

There was no one around to ask who it belonged to, so we decided to wind back the film and get it developed. The thought was to try and identify the owners. It was a nice camera with just a dent in the metal ring round the lens, it was worth a bit of money and it would have been sad to lose by the owners. It might have had important memories attached to it.

We waited a week for the photos to come back. There were three photos of the landscape, but nothing to identify the owner, no people and no houses or cars.

In the end we kept the camera. I used it for years, taking photos for college, holidays and family events. I always wanted to give it back. I used 35mm film with an iso of 400. It had a good life with us.

Outside into the countryside

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What is your favorite place to go in your city?

My city stands on its own, not really part of a conurbation. It is between Birmingham and Manchester and there are small satellite towns dotted around it.

When I first came to live here, what always struck me, was how close the countryside is. South and East are Staffordshire farmland, West is Shropshires rolling hills and also Cheshire with it’s flat plain and salt mines, North East is Derbyshire with the pennines hilly beginnings and also the Staffordshire moorlands with old industrial buildings hidden in its valleys.

The area is crisscrossed by canals, rivers, train tracks and roads. Alton Towers is a few miles to the North east, further north is the old silk mill towns of Leek and closer to Manchester is Macclesfield.

The Trent and Mersey canal runs through the mile long Harecastle tunnel at Kidsgrove, where the water runs orange (from old iron mine workings?).

There are forests, fields, caves, lakes, walking and cycling routes. Bakewell is reasonably close, home of the Bakewell tart (pastry with raspberry jam and an almond paste topping?). Also famous for food is Market Drayton to our west. I think they make Gingerbread there.

There are National trust properties like Little Moreton Hall and Biddulph Grange. Big garden centres and antique centres. Not forgetting the gem that is the Dorothy Clive garden.

The city is not without its merits, Gladstone and Moorcroft, Middleport and Emma Bridgwater potteries and the potteries museum and art gallery all tell the history of the city.

But I like to get away from the hustle and bustle into quiet surroundings. Not forgetting the coast which is about 80 miles away in Wales.

Stoke on Trent is full of industrial heritage, a lot of it needs rescuing. But I love the place.

A camera!

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What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

We were cycling home on our tandem one summer evening, when suddenly we turned round in the road. I had no idea what was going on, it was a narrow country road and it surprised me.

We pulled up and my hubby started looking on the grass verge. There was a camera just lying there! We didn’t know what to do, so we took it home (we were in the middle of the countryside), with the idea of seeing if there was a film inside and getting it developed if there was. We would try and get it back to its owners somehow? This was about 30 or so years ago before we had the Internet, so there wasn’t much hope of finding its owners.

We sent the film off, but it came back blank, it must have been lost when someone put a new film in, maybe put it on top of a car and forgot to move it when they drove off.

I have to say I had forgotten all about it until I saw this prompt, and now I feel guilty for not reuniting it with it’s owners.