Worbarrow Bay
| Worbarrow Bay | ||
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 View of the cliffs in Worbarrow Bay, taken from a location with the field name Gold Down . The direction of view is approximately northwest. In the upper part of the picture on the far left you can see the entrance to the Bay of Arish Mell. To the right of it the rock of Cow Corner, again to the right of it the cliff of Rings Hill. Above Cow Corner, in the background, the village of Burngate. The whitish steep walls consist of limestones of the Upper Cretaceous (“Chalk”), the brownish cliff in the right center consists mainly of sandstones from the Lower Cretaceous (“Wealden”). |
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| Waters | English Channel | |
| Land mass | Isle of Purbeck | |
| Geographical location | 50 ° 37 '4 " N , 2 ° 11' 51" W | |
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| width | approx. 3 km | |
The Worbarrow Bay is a large, wide and shallow bay, east of Lulworth Cove on the peninsula Isle of Purbeck in the county of Dorset , on the south coast of England .
location
Worbarrow Bay is about six kilometers south of Wareham and about 16 kilometers west of Swanage . It goes over to the west in the Mupe Bay , with which it forms a kind of double bay. Worbarrow Bay is bounded southeast-seaward by the headland Worbarrow Tout . Its northwest landward end is known as Cow Corner . Both Worbarrow and Mupe Bay are surrounded by more or less steep and high cliffs . The boundary between the bays is level with a gap in the landward part of the cliff, behind which lies the small Bay of Arish Mell . The gap in the cliff is therefore also called the Arish Mell Gap .
In the hinterland of Worbarrow Bay is the Tyneham Ghost Village and Museum . The entire population of Tyneham was evacuated at short notice in December 1943 to make way for the army and was not allowed to return to this place even after the end of the war. Worbarrow Bay is only accessible when the Lulworth shooting range is closed and the trails are reopened to the public. The bay can be reached with a 1.4 kilometer walk from the parking lot next to Tyneham village.
At the highest point of the cliff of Worbarrow Bay, where the Rings Hill slopes steeply to the sea, is Flower's Barrow , which is the remains of an Iron Age fortification, which the layman can hardly recognize from the surface of the terrain. In addition, around half of the ruin has already slipped into the sea due to coastal erosion and the rest of Flower's Barrow will also disappear in the near future.
Jurassic Coast
The steep coast of the English Channel in East Devon and Dorset is one of the natural wonders of the world. From Orcombe Point in Exmouth , up to Old Harry Rocks , a 155 km long coastline, the first country in the UK by extending UNESCO for World Heritage declared.
The Jurassic Coast rock strata tilted to the east. The geologically oldest rocks are therefore in the westernmost section of this coastal geotope . The mean age of the rocks gradually decreases towards the east. The natural outcrops along the coast form a largely continuous sequence, ranging from deposits of the Triassic , through those of the Jura to those of the Cretaceous period and representing a total geological period of around 185 million years. Worbarrow Bay and Worbarrow Tout are part of the Jurassic Coast.
Geology and geomorphology
From a structural geological point of view, the steep coast in Worbarrow and Mupe Bay is part of a major bend, the so-called Purbeck monocline . As part of the formation of this structure, the layers of the there are pending sedimentary rocks have been erected so that it at about 45 degrees in Worbarrow and up to 60 degrees in Mupe Bay today come . The same sequence of rocks emerges in the border of both bays. Due to the strike direction of the strata from approximately west-east, the geomorphology of the western border of the double bay is in fact a mirror image of the eastern one. The white chalk rock of the late Cretaceous period , here is the geologically youngest rock, standing on the back of the double bay where Worbarrow Bay formed by the steep cliffs of Cow Corner Rings Hill. The height of the chalk cliff decreases towards the Arish Mell Gap. In addition to the Upper Cretaceous limestones, the steep coast of the double bay contains layers of the Lower Cretaceous ( Upper Greensand and Gault Clay as well as the sandstone-rich Wealden layers ), the lithologically diverse Purbeck layers , which reach from the Lower Lower Cretaceous to the Upper Jurassic , and the Portland Stone -Formation of the Upper Jurassic. The age of the layers increases seaward, that is, the Purbeck layers and the Portland limestone form the front of the double bay, namely in the form of the small Cape Worbarrow Tout in the east and the Mupe Rocks in the west. The layers here become younger from north to south, which differs from the general pattern on the Jurassic Coast, according to which the layers become younger from west to east. The layers of the Wealden are relatively prone to erosion , which is why where they stand, the height of the cliff also decreases more significantly.
Individual evidence
- ^ Dorset and East Devon Coast . UNESCO World Heritage Center. 2001. Retrieved November 16, 2010.