Search the Community

Yesterday I spent a lovely spring morning walking along the Sheppey coast to a place known as Eastchurch gap. I have known of this place for many years and never made the couple mile hike along the beach from Minster before. Normally I would stay much closer to the Minster end of the cliffs but as the weather was fine and the tide was in my favour I decided to take a punt on searching new grounds. After a fairly fruitless trek I finally rounded an outcrop of the London clay and recognised the landscape and features I had only seen in pictures of the famous Eastchurch gap. Within seconds of entering the gap I spotted my first find... an almost 1 foot long partial nautilus sticking out of the clay and half covered by shingle. After digging it out from the clay I was saddened to see that the centre had crumbled into a sticky mush of shell and clay. My hopes were raised again only moments later when I spied my second nautilus shell! Almost unbelievable I thought someone was playing an April fool on me! Again though my joy was slightly deminished upon finding the centre missing. After searching for almost an hour more and finding almost.nothing else I started to think about heading back as I was getting rather hot in the lunchtime sun and had run out of drinking water so made a decision to check one last clay slump and caught a glimpse of that familiar shine laying on its side before me... a THIRD nautilus! This time though it was almost a whole specimen, with the centre intact! With the fatigue of the long walk through clay, mud and shingle and a backpack well weighted by nautili specimens I headed back towards home feeling rather happy with my days hunting and planning to return with the hope of finding a variety of specimens on my next adventure! I will upload pictures as soon as I am able to. :-) happy hunting!