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Geological Walk at Dunraven Bay, Southerndown

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This is some additional information and pictures to support the geology walk at Southerndown, Dunraven Bay. Take a look at the descriptions under each picture to see more information

The Localities mentioned on this post relate to the map which is included in the leaflet PDF and is repeated here to make this page easier to read. For more information and descriptions of all the localities and the start point, parking etc. please see the leaflet

To download and print this walk, please open / download the PDF version here

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The thick bed of rock described at location 3 is clearly seen further west in the cliff
To the west of the car park. These cliffs look spectacular, but they are also dangerous and it's not a good idea to sunbathe at the foot of the cliffs. There have been fairly recent deaths by falling rocks on this coastline
Standing well back is also sensible on the eastern side and here looking at Location 4 with this wider angle view than the one in the leaflet, you can clearly see how the fault planes are not just in the lower corner, but are visible in the full height of the cliff
You can see that the rocks at the bottom are horizontal, whereas the ones above dip to the right of this picture. The Carboniferous rocks at the bottom of the cliff have been eroded and then at a much later time the jurassic rocks have been deposited on top of them. This time gap is called an unconformity. There is no way for geologists to know what happened in this location in that missing time record but by looking at other places where these rocks were not worn away they can infer a larger scale view of that missing time
A geologist standing well back and admiring the anticline (upwards fold) in the jurassic rocks at locality 9
Oysters (left) and Pinna (right) on the rocks of Southerndown beach foreshore
View of the Structures (folding and faulting) on the beach looking from Location 12 in the walk towards Nash Point

A useful addition to your walk is the BGS Geology Viewer which is a free smartphone app to view geological maps of Britain wherever you go https://www.bgs.ac.uk/technologies/apps/igeology-app/

We hope you enjoyed this short tour of Dunraven Bay. If you’d like to learn more about our local geology, take a look at other pages on the South Wales Geologists’ Association website: www.swga.org.uk