Category: geology

4 March 2022

Seatown is a lesser-known beach on the Jurassic Coast, just east of Golden Cap, the highest point on the south coast. I visited it at the lowest tide this quarter – the spring spring tide at just under 0.5m, hoping to see some rocks that are usually underwater.…

1 July 2021

We were lucky to choose a sunny day for exploring some South Devon beaches – not so easy this summer, which has been alternately cold and wet, grey and humid, sunny and dry. Starting at Ayrmer Cove (which I visited last year), we enjoyed the beautiful rock formations…

21 April 2021

I thought twice about the title of this page, having found Ian McEwan’s novel of the same name quite dire! But what the hell, that’s where I was on a cold, windy but very sunny spring day. We started off at the beach car park and walked along…

15 October 2020

Today I went in search of Lyme history on Monmouth Beach, west of the town. We tend to think of Lyme Regis as being primarily a tourist town, but like most coastal settlements, it had a number of industries in the past – fishing of course – but…

7 September 2020

A brief day of Indian Summer was just the right time for a walk near Brixham with a friend. We started at the car park at Berry Head by admiring the shimmer of sunlight on the distant sea, and then walked along to Sharkham Point and down onto…

29 June 2020

As an undergraduate geologist, my favourite subject was igneous and metamorphic petrology, so visiting the South Devon coast is always interesting, and this stretch is no exception. Pink, grey, mottled and black slates of the Meadfoot Group are striped and slashed with quartz veins. They make for all…

13 November 2019

As beachcombing visitors to Lyme Regis will already know, the east beach there is a fertile source of industrial and domestic debris. I’m a confirmed rustaholic and collector of unconsidered trifles, so it’s one of my favourite coastal destinations! From Victorian times until the 1970s, land east of…

29 July 2019

I’ve just returned from a short break in south-east Cornwall, and it turned into an opportunity for a small photographic project on rock abstracts, as well as the chance to beachcomb to my heart’s content. (I was especially pleased to find an unbroken necklace shell, though it will…

13 April 2019

On a dry and bright breezy day, I did this circular walk starting and finishing in the lovely village of Worth Matravers on the Isle of Purbeck. Up and down to the coast along steep combes, and a short stretch of the Coast Path. Walking down to the…

24 September 2018

Taking advantage of a low spring tide and a glorious warm autumn day, we walked west from Seaton Hole, round to Beer (a surprisingly short and easy trek), and then on to the fabulous chalk cliff and unspoilt shingle beach at Pound’s Pool after a stop for a…