It looked like blood but of course it wasn’t! Red liquid seemed to be oozing from the sand high on the shore towards the north end of Whiteford Sands on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, approaching Whiteford Point. I have seen the phenomenon before and wrote about a possible explanation in the post “Rusty pebbles at Whiteford”. Only on that occasion the seepage was more orange in colour and clearly ferruginous in nature. Yesterday, the liquid seemed much more concentrated and red, like blood, quite spectacular, but perhaps just a trick of the light. These photographs are as taken and not edited in any way as I am uploading them direct from my i-pad. I believe that the iron responsible for colouring the water draining down the shore is derived from an iron pan caused by decomposition of an ancient peat bed beneath the sand. It is possible to see the layers of peat and clay where they are exposed just below the seepage rivulets. The peat and clay layers are increasingly interesting as more logs and stumps of preserved trees and bushes are weathering out. More about these features in later posts.
Terrific!
Thanks, Bob.
Fascinating! And beautiful in its own way. Nicely captured.
Thank you, Linda.
Spectacular looking Jessica, and seems like a good explanation.
Thanks, Adrian.
Beautiful images Jessica and thanks for the information too.
Great pictures, but a somewhat disturbing image.
Yes, Allison, they could fire the imagination in all sorts of directions!
How fascinating! What an intriguing sight. I’m sure in the Middle Ages this would have been seen as a sign of an approaching army and possibly Armageddon!
What a thought – immediately conjures up visions of long-buried corpses coming to life, ready to break through the sand to the surface.