Smooth pebbles, wet and vibrantly coloured, wave-washed and surf-splashed, on the waters’ edge on a bright sunny day at Seatown Beach in Dorset, England, along the World Heritage Jurassic Coast.
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At Whitstable Harbour gabions have been put to good use in the construction of a remarkable feature. Approaching the construction I could see an intriguing pale line across the darker pebbles, very reminiscent of the pale lines of empty oyster shells that I had just been seeing on the pebble beaches between the breakwaters. Closer inspection proved the pale line to be a symbolic tide line of man-made decorated ceramic pebbles. The feature is known as the Deck at Dead Man’s Corner and is supposed to resemble the bow of a ship, the wall a pebbly beach, and the vertical timber structures are made to the same specification as the groynes along the shore. The ‘tide line’ is a key feature of white ceramic pebbles set into the face of the wall. These were made by local people during a series of public workshops and classes held at the Community College Whitstable. The whole structure comprises seating and a stage built in 2011 for gatherings and events.
A collection of natural objects displayed on my mantelpiece at the moment, along with a postcard of a watercolour painting The Pelicans by the artist Angela Gladwell (angelagladwell.co.uk).
Click once on the image to find out what the objects are.
Click twice or three times to see the details of the objects.
The beach at Seatown in Dorset comprises a series of steep pebble banks. You can see how far up the shore the last high tide has been by the line of natural debris extending along the shore parallel to the water’s edge. On this occasion the strandline was almost entirely made up of dried red seaweed which contrasted well with the pebbles. Quite a number of white cuttlefish bones rested on the weed. I am fascinated by their beautiful structure. For some reason, the shape of the more concave surface (as in image 5) always makes me think of angels.
The shingle shore at Whitstable in Kent is protected by massive wooden groynes or breakwaters. At the time of my visit, the tide was high and the flint and other mostly worm-holed pebbles were steeply banked. The flat top of the beach was stabilised by vegetation with pink and white valerian and yellow ragwort the most colourful flowers. Pale bands of white empty oyster shells (mostly the rock oyster Crassostrea gigas) were high, dry, and dull on the shingle between the groynes; while lower down splashed by waves or heaped up against the wooden sea defence structures was a great variety of other empty shells including winkles, cockles, mussels, limpets, slipper limpets, whelks, netted whelks, Manila clams, and sting winkles. These were jumbled up with wet and dry seaweed, horn wrack, small pieces of driftwood, and flotsam. There was a marked contrast in the appearance of the shells and stones between the water’s edge where the wet shells were brighter and more colourful and the upper shore where everything was dry.
Broughton Bay is a wide sandy expanse on the north shore of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, facing the Loughor Estuary or Burry Inlet. A small promontory called Twlc Point at the western end of the beach has an interesting geology with an exposure of Hunts Bay Oolite from the Carboniferous Period. I have written about these strata in earlier posts such as:
Rocks on the west side of Broughton Bay Part 1
Rocks on the west side of Broughton Bay Part 2
Rocks on the west side of Broughton Bay Part 3
Brachiopod fossils in Hunts Bay Oolite at Broughton Bay
On this particular visit I was content to appreciate the way that pebbles of many types and colours on the upper shore were clustered around outcrops and boulders of the limestone which were often pink-tinged and sometimes fossiliferous.
Walking back from Spaniard Rocks now, I took a route closer to the dunes where the character of the shore is quite different from the wet sand and strandlines between high and low tide levels. Here there are pebbles. Rhossili’s pebbles intrigue me. I love scrambling over the banks of stones at the very top of the beach. The colours are lovely pastel shades with pinks and blues and overall reminding me of sugared almonds. A total delight. Many rock types are represented. Some have interesting patterns.
I like the way that the numbers of beach stones seem to increase or decrease depending on how they are pushed around the shore between one visit and the next, and how the sand changes its level and distribution throughout the year and the transition from season to season. This time the wooden ribs and keel of the shipwrecked ketch Anne were only just visible above the sand and pebbles. I like the way that pebbles are arranged partly buried in the damp sand that quickly dries to a different hue and texture. The pebbles underlie the tall sand dunes of the Llangennith Burrows. The dunes have been scooped out by stormy seas and footsteps in many places to demonstrate that even wind-blown sand is stratified; and marram grass roots exposed to air show how deep they penetrate the soft fine sediments to bind them together and stabilise the dunes.
Diles Lake is really a stream that drains the Llangennith marshes lying behind the dunes at Rhossili in Gower. The water is frequently dammed back to resemble a lake by banks of pebbles pushed upshore by strong tides – but the water always works its way through the pebbles and sand to flow across the beach, spreading out into myriads of shallow channels as it approaches the sea. Underwater, the many colours of the pebbles are clear to see, contrasting with the dry stones stacked to the side often showing a black coating caused by earlier burial at deeper anaerobic levels of the beach.
It can be quite tricky to cross the stream but on this occasion someone had conveniently made ‘stepping stones’ from an old pallet and driftwood. I noticed that the stream exiting the dunes had long trailing clumps of unpleasant-looking brown filamentous algae of a type resembling something more typical of polluted water – but I must have been mistaken because the water sampling point for Rhossili is nearby and it has only recently been declared of excellent bathing quality.
The heaped pebbles once over the stream had brightly coloured pieces of knotted rope from fishing activities and a scrunched up newspaper (perhaps it had held bait). My eye was also caught almost immediately by a much larger piece of vivid flotsam washed up and stranded at mid shore level. It was about 1 metre in diameter and hip high and made quite a sculptural addition to the beachscape. Faint embossed lettering provided the clue I needed to do an internet search and discover it was a wrecked rigid mooring buoy style MB350 made by the Norfloat company in Exeter.
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The upper part of the sandy beach at South Beach, Studland in Dorset is littered with pebbles and stones of many colours and interesting patterns and textures. They are mostly flint and ironstone that has weathered out of the chalk that forms impressive cliffs from here to Old Harry Rocks and the Foreland or Handfast Point in the distance.
Click on any image to enlarge and view in a gallery.
REFERENCES
Barton, CM, Woods, MA, Bristow, CR, Newell, AJ, Weathead, RK, Evans, DJ, Kirby, GA, Warrington, G, Riding, JB, Freshney, EC, Highley, DE, Lott, GK, Forster, A, and Gibson, A. 2011. Geology of south Dorset and south-east Devon and its World Heritage Coast. Special Memoir of the British Geological Survey. Sheets 328, 341/342, 342/343, and parts of 326/340, 327, 329 and 339 (England and Wales), 9–100.
Cope, JCW, 2012 Geology of the Dorset Coast, Geologists’ Association Guide No. 22, Guide Series Editor SB Marriott, The Geologists’ Association, 191-194.
Swanage Solid and Drift Geology (map), British Geological Survey (Natural Environment Research Council) 1:50,000 Series, England and wales Sheets 342 (East) and part of 343
