Brandy Bay

50 614 - 2.15622Koordinaten: 50 ° 36 ' 50 " N, 2 ° 9' 22 " W

Brandy Bay is a small secluded cove west of Kimmeridge on the peninsula Isle of Purbeck, in the county of Dorset, on the south coast of England.

The name was created by the taking place there during the 17th and 18th century smuggling, including of brandy.

Location

Brandy Bay is located about one kilometer south of the ghost town Tyneham and about six kilometers south of Wareham. The bay is approximately 13 km directly west of Swanage.

The Brandy Bay is about two miles long, it is surrounded by high cliffs of Gad Cliff and the hill Tynham Cap. Wagon Rock is a large boulder that has fallen from the upper parts of the cliff out. The gritty beach has formed on oil shales of the Jurassic.

The beach is accessible only by foot from the coastal path, via Hobarrow Bay, or by boat, access to Brandy Bay is, however, forbidden to the public. The property is owned by the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom and part of the training school for armored fighting vehicles ( Armoured Fighting Vehicles Gunnery School) Lulworth Military Range. The coastal path is open on weekends. Hikers are warned to stay on the sidewalk, because the surrounding area is cleared of unexploded ordnance.

Jurassic Coast

Brandy Bay is part of the so-called Jurassic Coast. From Orcombe Point at Exmouth to Old Harry Rocks east of Studland Bay extends in the East Devon and Dorset, a 155 km long coastline, which was taken as the first natural landscape in England by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The complex geology of the Isle of Purbeck is clearly the coast near the Jurassic Coast. Although the rock strata along the coast tend to fall a north, the axis of the parent fold structure of the Purbeck Monoclinic dive but to the east. Therefore, the oldest part is found in the west of the area, the cliffs to the east are built by younger rocks. The large-scale fold structure of the Purbeck Monoclinic is overprinted by smaller specialist wrinkles in the kilometer scale and disorders.

The outcrops along the coast show a continuous sequence of resulting in Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous geological deposits, representing about 185 million years of Earth's history. The rocks are known for their fossils, including ammonites and dinosaur remains.

Geological sequence

The geological structure of the Brandy Bay is determined by a subducting northward folding saddle. The flat, suitcase -like shape of the saddle the rock layers extend in the Brandy Bay nearly east-west and thus parallel to the west side of the bay. In the east, the stratification is almost horizontal. Due to the generally shallow collapsing the layer sequence is well exposed, especially in the west of the bay.

The digested in the Brandy Bay rocks are divided into four layer sequences. The top layer form the Purbeck Beds ( Purbeck layers) that were deposited about 147 million years ago. Underneath lies the Portland Limestone (Portland - limestone), about 150 million years old. He is again on the Portland Sands ( Portland sandstone), and at the base followed by about 155 million year old layer sequence of the Kimmeridge Clay ( Kimmeridgian clay of Kimmeridgiums ).

The Kimmeridge Clay can be further divided into Brandy Bay. The flat ridge below the cliffs between Brandy Bay and Bay Hobarrow is called Long Ebb reef. ( Dolomite ) wood Cattle Ledge, Grey Ledge and eventually the Black Stone Washing Ledge ( dolomite), Maple Ledge ( an oil shale), which contains the Whitestone band, which is composed of coccoliths: From there to the northwest, the following rock layers are present. Due to the fact that the overhead, harder limestone and sandstones are underlain by an unstable sound sequences, the cliffs are prone to landslides.