These pebbles were all photographed within a few metres of each other on the beach at Whiteford Point, Gower. A relatively small selection showing a wide variety of shape, colour, texture, pattern and composition. There are limestones, sandstones, conglomerates, and fossils. Ovals, triangles, rectangles and boot-shapes! Red, yellow, orange, brown, buff, grey and blue-grey. Rusty patterns made by the inclusion of iron minerals within the stone. Patterns made by an assortment of rock types of different sizes cemented together. Designs formed by the inclusion of fossil corals. Patterns made by quartz veins in the mother rock. Pebbles derived from local rocks like Old Red Devonian sandstone, Carboniferous limestone, Millstone Grit and Coal Measures. Pebbles delivered to the Point from much further afield courtesy of an ice sheet.
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I find rocks like these at Hartlen Point, here in Nova Scotia, but they aren’t pebbles — they’re hand-sized and bigger, rocks. To me a pebble is teeny, under an inch long, how small are these really ? They are so lovely and I admire your ability to identify their makeup.
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Strictly speaking, you may be right that some of the stones in this post are larger than would be classified as pebbles under the British Wentworth scale of particle sizing. Some are more the size of what we would call cobbles over here. Pebbles range in size from 4 – 64 mm or from under an inch to 2.5 inches in diameter. Cobbles range in size from 2.5 to 10.1 inches (64-203.2 mm). In the US there is a different nomenclature and size scale.
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