When Rachael from Scarborough Museums Trust contacted us to join them at their annual Yorkshire Fossil Festival in September, we thought we would need to wrap up warm, how wrong we were. When we woke up after a sketchy nights sleep in a tent we put up in the dark (badly!) the sun was shining!
When we arrived at Scarborough Beach we unloaded the van and then was met by Rachael and the fabulous volunteers who got stuck in straight away helping us collect water from the sea and then do some shoveling ……..a lot of shoveling! Our Plesiosaur would be quite a big fella. Tom and I then got to work in the sunshine sculpting our dinosaur friend and chatting to passers by about what we were doing.
In the afternoon we ran a workshop session with some of the families from the festival, making smaller versions of our Plesiosaur. Some of the results were fantastic and everyone had fun making them. Tom even bumped into the chap he was up against when he appeared on Channel 4’s Countdown. To cut a long story short, Tom lost and we don’t mention the word laminated!
That evening Tom and I were joined by Jamie and little Flo in the campervan, they had been on a little adventure of their own! Jamie cooked up a feast for us and we all had a drink watching the amazing view at the campsite, as the sun went down. Tom and Jamie started chatting about planets and the solar system, so I made my excuses and went to bed.
Sunday Tom and I, with the help again of the wonderful volunteers set up on the beach to make another sculpture. This time we made an ammonite. We then set up and ran the workshops for the afternoon, with the children and families making their own ammonites. Again everyone was really enthusiastic and this is what makes our job so enjoyable.
Massive thanks to Rachael and the team at the Scarborough Museums Trust for a fantastic weekend!