We used to find fossils on the Yorkshire coast as well, Maggie, around Flamborough. But a lot of that coast has been eroded by the sea, the coastline is constantly changing.
Another point, if you go with the family make sure you check tide times first, people have been cut off and had to be rescued, especially on the south coast.

Maggiemaybe Picking the new cliff fall stuff is OK. Just everyone lay off the hammers.
A number of areas have had really lovely fossils stolen for the fossil black market. High Force being one.

Well for the record, we didn't need hammers. We found our fossils lying on the beach amongst the shells.

FGS The Jurassic coast is a world heritage site. whc.unesco.org/en/list/1029

Do not go anywhere near the place with a hammer you could be destroying important geological record.

Fossil hunters do an awful lot of damage to such sites, which like the Jurassic coast are sites of special scientific interest. Nobody without a permit should touch these cliffs.

Forget collecting fossils. In areas like Dorset get the children looking at the whole landscape of the area and try explaining how and where that formed and then learn about what the fossils can tell us about the age of the rocks and what sorth of places they lived in.

Show them how the different groups of rocks are stacked together. Explain how fossils can show the age of rocks and show what global conditions were like but FGS leave the fossils in situ until the erosion of the cliffs claim them.

The main importance of Fossils is in dating the rocks. It is the way the rocks in that area were formed and fit together in slices of different rock structures that the children need to learn and talk about to gain an insight into what has been going on.

And if you are a creationist don't bother going at all, you will not like the answers.

Seriously letting the general public loose with hammers is seriously frowned on in any site nowadays.

We live reasonably close to both Lyme Regis and Charmouth and our grandsons aged 4 and 7 love going fossil hunting with their grandfather, especially as they get to wield hammers.

I suppose that might be salt,Maggiemaybe but I now have an amusing cartoon in my head, thanks for the .

Yes, we've loads of fossils collected by the DC on our frequent visits to Staithes, Runswick Bay and other beaches on the Yorkshire coast. I came across some the other day in a box in our cellar, but one was covered with some sort of white crystals. It's sitting on my kitchen windowsill now - every time I wipe the deposit off it reappears within hours. DH is convinced that one morning we're going to come downstairs to find a baby dinosaur sitting in the sink....

DH and I hunted for fossils in Lyme some years ago, but our grandson has never been there. Instead, on our frequent visits to Filey on the East Coast of Yorkshire with him, we have found lots of plant and animal fossils in the sandstone sediment of the cliffs there. He has quite a little collection now. Robin Hood's Bay is another good place for fossil hunters. There were places in the Peak District, where limestone prevailed in the landscape, where fossils of shells and sea creatures could be picked up from the limestone waste, but I haven't seen any for a good long time.