Monday 1st July 2024, 2.50pm (day 4,694)

The southern coast of the Isle of Wight is one of the best places in the world to find fossils. This is not, I now realise, because more creatures somehow died here in the past. In fact it is because the entirety of this coast is sliding, fairly rapidly, into the English Channel, and so things long buried are regularly uncovered. Look at the erosion here — and the obvious geology, sandstone on the left, chalk thereafter. If you want my considered opinion I wouldn’t buy property too near this coast.