My coast: Tracy Chevalier

Novelist Tracy Chevalier, whose 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' became an Oscar-nominated film, found the inspiration for her latest book on a Dorset beach. By Glyn Brown

'I grew up in Washington DC, but my family also had a beat-up old farmhouse near Bethany Beach, Delaware.

 

'We spent all our summers there. It had idyllic coves and great swimming because the water was so warm. We'd go out in our little motor boat to the back bays to fish, or we'd buy old chicken necks and go crabbing, then take our crabs home and steam them. I'd be brown as a berry for the entire summer.

 

'I now live in Kentish Town, North London, but my husband Jonathan and I have a cottage in the Piddle Valley, Dorset.

 

'You can walk along the Wessex Ridgeway, which is glorious, look east towards Poole and see the sea and Brownsea Island.

 

'I discovered Lyme Regis long ago, with an American friend.

 

'We'd seen 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', and went out on the Cobb to do our Meryl Streep. Lyme is wonderful and offbeat, and my favourite time is out of season. I arrived once, midweek in November. It was deserted. It was all mine.

 

'The book I've just finished is about Mary Anning, the Victorian fossil hunter.

 

'At low tide, you can walk the stretch of beach between Lyme and Charmouth, where she made her discoveries. I've got the bug now, too - I'm always looking. My son Jacob, who's nine, has the bug to a degree, but I know he sometimes thinks, "Oh brother!"

 

'When I found part of the shoulder bone of an ichthyosaur, I wouldn't let go of it for hours.

 

'Local fossil hunter Paddy Howe showed me how to begin looking. At the start, I was so embarrassed that I found so little. I was constantly picking things up, saying, "Is this a fossil?" "No, that's flint." When finally I found the shoulder bone, and then later a vertebra of a plesiosaur, I was overwhelmed.

 

'The beach is ever-changing. You may have a fruitless day, but you know next day the tide will have brought something in from the sea. There's always a feeling of renewed hope, which I find inspiring.

 

'I swam at night once, in Tenerife, when a friend and I were there for the carnival.

 

'We danced in the streets all night in costume, then went to the beach later with a couple of guys who didn't want to get their hair wet. But we didn't care - we stripped off and ran into the waves. It was about four in the morning, and there was phosphorescence all around us in the water.

 

'One of my favourite beaches is Kimmeridge Bay in Purbeck - beautiful and isolated.

 

'It's not far from a fantastic pub, the Square & Compass at Worth Matravers. It's a deeply eccentric place in just a glorious location and, best of all, there's a fossil museum in a room at the end of the bar!'

 

'Remarkable Creatures' by Tracy Chevalier, published by HarperCollins, is out now 

 

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You might also like...

 

Read last month's 'My Coast', about Chas and Dave's Margate memories

 

Spend a day in Lyme Regis

 

Take a walk along the Jurassic Coast, just one of over 100 walks in our nationwide guide

 

Move to a seaside resort with our guide

 

 

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