Have you ever thought of going on a dinosaur walk before? We recently spent some time on the Isle of Wight and we were looking for different things to do. We’ve visited Carisbrooke Castle and Osborne House lots of times, so wanted to find something a little unusual. The kids both love learning about dinosaurs and as the Isle of Wight is famous as a site of many dinosaurs finds, we thought we would try a dinosaur walk, looking for dinosaur fossils.

Dinosaur walks on the Isle of Wight

We love exploring the Isle of Wight. It’s a great place to holiday with kids of any age and there is always something new to do. On our most recent visit we spent some time searching for dinosaur fossil walks. A number of different places organise this kind of guided walk throughout the year in different locations around the Island.

Loads of important dinosaur fossils have been found around the south coast of the Isle of Wight, from Compton Bay round to Sandown. We decided to go on a guided walk organised by the Isle of Wight Dinosaur Isle Museum. They run several walks each month at different places around the Isle of Wight. You need to pre-book the walks and pay in advance. We chose a suitable walk and turned up at Dinosaur Isle to meet our guide.

Our guide gave us a brief introduction to the walk before we all headed off along the esplanade towards Yaverland. Our guide said he took groups to different parts of the beach but we ended up staying at the one spot.

Our guide was great at explaining what to look out for, and picked up lots of different rocks and stones to show us the different types of fossils on the beach. There was a huge variety of different stones to look for and our guide was very patient with everyone, identifying all our rocks!

Some people had bought buckets to store their fossils, but all we had was dog poo bags! The kids didn’t mind and happily searched for rocks. We learned a lot about dinosaur fossils and found lots of fossilised dinosaur poo as well as other types of fossils. There was a huge variety of different types of stones too, and we were surprised just how far they had travelled to end up on the beach.

The weather was great and we spent about 90 minutes looking for fossils on the beach. The tour was very relaxed and those with younger children left to go and play on the beach. The only downside was that the dinosaur walk was described as dog friendly but we ended up on a beach where dogs were not allowed.

We all enjoyed the experience and went home with a few fossils which the kids couldn’t wait to take to school and show their friends.