Category: Coast

Selwicks Bay

Selwicks Bay

Dipping back in my A-level field notebook and in those pre-digital days, I found that colour prints could be more useful than slides, as I could stick them in my notebook. Here I’ve indicated a fault in the wave-cut platform of Selwicks Bay, Flamborough Head.

Flints in Chalk

flints
Flints in chalk

Flints are exposed in the chalk of the wave-cut platform south of the fault. Flints like these may have formed when the silica-rich skeletons of sponges and other creatures formed a gel on the seafloor which was drawn down into burrows in the chalk ooze – hence the shape of the nodules.

Buttress of Contorted Chalk

RockWATCH group guided around the features of the bay by geologist Richard Myerscough.

We looked at a buttress of contorted chalk south of the fault. The chalk contorted by the fault has been re-cemented by calcite-rich fluids circulating through the rock and depositing veins of calcite.

Strengthened by this cement the chalk is harder than that surrounding it and it has withstood erosion and formed a buttress.

Contorted Chalk with Calcite Veins

calcite vein

This vein is exposed on the wave-cut platform in front of the buttress.

Tilted layers near at the fault plane
Fault breccia: chalk crushed by movement along the fault
Fault and crush zone, Selwicks Bay, Flamborough Head

Waterton at Flamborough

My drawing of Waterton at Bempton for an article I wrote for ‘Yorkshire Life’ in 1976.

In May 1834 Charles Waterton had himself lowered by rope down the cliffs at Flamborough by two local egg-gatherers:

‘The sea was roaring at the base of this stupendous wall of rocks; thousands and tens of thousands of wild fowl were in an instant on the wing: the kittiwakes and jackdaws rose in circling flight; while most of the guillemots, razorbills, and puffins, left the ledges of the rocks, in a straight and downward line, with a peculiarly quick motion of the pinions, till they plunged into the ocean.’

Charles Waterton, ‘Essays on Natural History’ (1835-1857)
Waterton at Flamborough
Frontispiece of ‘Remarkable Men’, published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, undated.

My version of this scene was based on this Victorian engraving, artist uncredited except for the initials in the bottom left hand corner, which could be those of the engraver.

Coastal Flowers

Restharrow, pyramidal and common spotted orchids, sea plantain and kidney vetch at Whitby and Scarborough a couple of weeks ago.

The orchids and vetch were growing at the foot of a hummocky slope on South Bay Scarborough, the result of a massive landslide in 1995 which undercut the Holbeck Hall Hotel at the top of the slope. The slope has been stabilised using imported boulders and hardcore.

Whitby Ammonites

Ammonite in boulder clay cliff
ammonite cartoon

As we walked along the beach between Sandsend and Whitby on Friday morning, I spotted this ammonite fossil embedded in the boulder clay cliff. The closely spaced ribs are almost straight, so that it reminded me of a section of reinforced hosepipe.

Dactylioceras was a slow swimming ammonite from the Early Jurassic. This looks like a fragment of the shell of Dactylioceras tenuicostatum, a common fossil found in the Whitby Mudstone Formation at locations such as Port Mulgrave.

calcite crystals

The hollow chamber inside the shell has been filled with calcite crystals.

Hildoceras

Hildoceras ammonite fossil

Hildoceras, also from the Early Jurassic has sickle-shaped ribs and a groove along the triple-keeled groove along the outer edge of the shell.

Hildoceras keel
Triple-keeled groove of Hildoceras

Hildoceras features on the title page of my book Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time, which was published 25 years ago by the British Geological Survey (see link below).

Yorkshire Rock

There’s a folktale that they’re the fossilised remains of serpents, driven from the cliff top at Whitby by Abbess St Hilda.

Link

Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time at my website Willow Island Editions

Staple Newk

Staple Newk

We were lucky with the weather for our midweek break on the coast, although at windswept Staple Newk at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, I made sure that I clung tight to my sketchbook as I drew this gannet calling and spreading its wings at the top of the cliff, just yards below the viewing platform.

gannet
In contrast, we had a day of near continual rain as we drove back home on Thursday.

Razor Shell

razor shell

I picked up this pod razor shell, Ensis siliqua, on the strandline at Bridlington last month. The valves, still hinged to each other, are so brittle that they broke as I carried it, yet they’re are tough enough for this clam to burrow deeply into sand, extending a muscular foot to excavate its burrow. It extends a siphon to the surface for filter feeding and respiration.

I’ve identified it as the pod razor shell because it seems to be broader a straighter than the other species of razor shell found on British beaches.

This is my first drawing on my new iPad Pro, using the vintage pen in Adobe Fresco and the natural brush 1. It doesn’t feel as natural as real pen and watercolour but the updated iPad is about as good as it gets for digital drawing.

Shore Crab

Mussel

The shell of this common mussel is encrusted with the calcareous tubes of keelworms, which have a prominent ridge, so that they’re triangular in cross section.

shore crab

The carapace of this shore crab is encrusted with barnacles, these are the barnacle Semibalanus balanoides, which have a diamond-shaped aperture. Between the barnacles at the front of the crab’s shell there’s a flat, pockmarked whitish crust, which looks like sea mat, a marine bryozoan, a colonial animal, filter-feeding from tiny individual cells, like coral.

bladderwrack

Like this small frond of bladderwrack seaweed, I picked these up on the beach near the harbour at Bridlington when we spent the day there last month.

Puffins

It was too windy to safely draw on the cliff top on our day trip to Flamborough on Tuesday, so these are puffins from our last month’s visit. A few were sitting together on a steep grassy slope in an inlet overlooking North Landing. When we visited on Tuesday there was just one, sitting tightly on a rocky ledge nearby.