Hunting for amber on The Amber Coast, Suffolk

My husband and I returned to the little village of Hintlesham in Suffolk this week, the place at which we honeymooned last April. We stay in a cosy log cabin at The Suffolk Escape. It is a great base for us to venture out into the beautiful Suffolk countryside (as well as enjoying it from the cosiness of the cabin!). Last year, we ventured to Southwold, Lowestoft and Felixstowe. This time around, we were on the hunt for raw amber along what is known as The Amber Coast, the coastline between Felixstowe and Southwold. Our first stop of the week was the quaint and very peaceful, Aldeburgh.  

Amber is fossilised tree resin, which has spent millions of years being tossed about in the sea and eventually gets washed up on the shore. My research told me raw amber looks a lot like your average brown stone. Now, being avid seaglass hunters and beachcombers, we thought we might have a bit of a hunt on our hands but that we would eventually stumble across a piece or two...  

Much "teeth-tapping" ensued (tapping the stones on your teeth to establish whether they felt like resin, rather than stone is an amber test) and many stones were picked up, examined and tossed back into the sea. We could find none of the elusive amber. 

So, what did we do? After an hour or so, we went and ate fish and chips on the beach and had a lovely stroll about town!  

Perhaps we will stick to the more rewarding past time of seaglass hunting! Next stop, Southwold... wish us luck!