MIKE LAYCOCK and family found fantastic fossils in the Yorkshire Dales.

WE clambered on to the scree and began searching the piles of stones. Suddenly, my daughter Gabrielle gave an excited cry: "I've found one!" On the side of a stone she had picked up were the clear markings of a shell.

Show a child a fossil in a dusty museum case, and you'd be lucky to register a flicker of feigned interest. Search for them where they were formed millions of years ago and it's a hands-on treasure hunt. After finding several more shells, we spotted the fossil of what appeared to have been part of a small tusk: could it have once belonged to a baby mammoth, I wondered, fancifully, in my ignorance.

We had climbed to this fascinating spot after parking up on a bright sunny day in Thorpe, a pretty hamlet off the busy Bolton Abbey to Grassington road.

Suddenly, you are away from the crowds that throng the Yorkshire Dales each weekend. The public footpath takes you up out of the village through a gorgeous limestone landscape, with lambs bleating in the fields. God's own country, indeed. The rocky scree where the fossils can be found is just alongside the path.

After our hunt, we carried on up the hill and over into the next valley, stopping for a picnic. As we walked, there were signs everywhere of spring life bursting out, including four perfect eggs which we found just lying on the ground in a grassy nest.

The path led down into Linton, a picture-postcard village which won a national newspaper competition in 1949 for the title "Loveliest Village in the North." It has stone cottages, immaculate gardens, a village green with maypole, tall trees full of vociferous rooks and a babbling brook, crossed by a ford and three bridges - a humped-back packhorse bridge, a clapper bridge made of long flat stones and a more modern road bridge.

We took drinks from the Fountaine Inn on to the green, and my daughter joined other children and a flock of baby ducklings paddling in the beck.

Dominating the green is the imposing facade of Fountaine's Hospital, almshouses built in 1721 for six poor men and women of the parish by a local boy made good, Richard Fountaine. It includes one of the tiniest chapels I have ever seen, which was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect of Castle Howard.

We ended with a visit to Linton Falls, a mile or so from the village, where the River Wharfe rushes through, making a spectacular sight after heavy rainfall. Nearby is an attractive 14th century church, which includes Norman features.

Factfile: To get there, take A59 past Harrogate, and then B6160 past Bolton Abbey towards Grassington. Thorpe is then signed.

Updated: 08:40 Saturday, May 22, 2004