The Friends Of Wren's Nest are time travellers. They often take themselves away from their normal lives to a beach by a tropical lagoon 420 million years ago.

As you travel along the A459 from Sedgley to Dudley, you can't see the sea but you can see the beach! Get up close and you can see the ripples on the bottom of that shallow sea and the coral reef that grew 50 yards away as the water grew deeper. You can see the dead bodies of sea creatures now extinct, but which survived for unimaginable lengths of time before life moved out of the water onto the land.

People in Dudley may think it's normal to have a nature reserve where virtually every rock you pick up has a fossil on its surface - it's not!  Dudley is famous throughout the world for its fossils.  It could claim to be the birthplace of the science of palaentology back in the 19th Century.  Whilst we're at it, it can also claim to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.  It's where Abraham Darby was born.  Our Seven Sisters Caverns are the only example in the world of surface opening limestone caverns. The first industrial steam engine, which pumped water from mines, was installed here, next to the Wren's Nest, before anywhere else in the world.  

You may think that with attractions like these,who needs friends - we do!