At Eype, blue clay cliffs slip, and subsequently unsupported rock strata above it collapse. Large boulders then roll down to the shingle shore. The variety of rock types, and sometimes the fossils within them (like belemnites), can be observed at close quarters. The newly surf-washed rocks, part-embedded in the bright orange pea-gravel and pebbles, make striking compositions with the wet surfaces revealing a greater intensity of colour, and finer detail of texture and structure.
Click here for earlier posts about EYPE.
What a variety of textures and colours. Great to find a location like that. Beautifully captured too.
Thank you, Adrian. You can walk over the cliffs from West Bay (where they filmed the television series “Broadchurch”) to Eype. It is on the Dorset Coastal Path. The cliffs look a bit like a disaster zone because of the way the lower layers of clay continually slip and rocks fall but it is none the less impressive. Difficult to walk along the pebbles and gravel shore. However, well worth the effort when you see the fascinating boulders and perhaps find some fossils. Looking back at the boulder with fossils in this post, I am wondering if there were some bones mixed in with the belemnites. There were all sorts of marine animals in the Jurassic, and these “bones” remind me of a part skeleton of a turtle that I found many years ago.
Takes me back to hunting for belemnites with our (then) small twins on “The Jurassic Coast”, at a time when it was just jurassic coast…! RH