Hobarrow Bay

50.609664 - 2.149978Koordinaten: 50 ° 36 '35 " N, 2 ° 9' 0 " W

Hobarrow 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.

Location

Hobarrow Bay is just over a kilometer southeast of the ghost village of Tyneham and about six kilometers south of Wareham. The bay is approximately 13 km directly west of Swanage.

The Hobarrow bay lies between Brandy Bay and Charnel, it is limited by Long Ebb in the west and Broad Bench in the east. The bay is about 500 meters long, the cliffs are between 20 and 30 meters high. The gritty beach is formed by almost horizontally lying rocks of the Kimmeridge Clay (especially oil shale, below). The beach is accessible only by foot from Kimmeridge Bay or by boat. Access to Hobarrow Bay is prohibited to the public. The property is owned by the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom and is part of the training school for armored fighting vehicles ( Armoured Fighting Vehicles Gunnery School ) of the Lulworth Military Range. The coastal path is open on weekends. Hikers are cautioned not to leave the footpath, because only this is cleared of unexploded ordnance.

Jurassic Coast

Hobarrow 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.

Geology

Hobarrow Bay is completely built of rocks of the Kimmeridge Clay kalkighaltigen, which was deposited about 155 million years ago. The upper part of the Kimmeridge Clay is part of the Kimmeridgian. The brown, flat-lying shales of Hobarrow Bay are the oldest open-minded parts of the Kimmeridge Clay in the Kimmeridge Cliffs.

The long, flat ridge below the cliffs between Hobarrow Bay and Brandy Bay is called Long Ebb, a jutting into the sea cliff of hard dolomite Dolomite Beds Flats. Very good visible in the cliff face is a deferment incident almost vertical. The layers of rock in the west are moved to the disorder by almost 10 meters to the top. Due to the postponement Tonsteinschichten are visible, which normally lie below the dolomite. In Long Ebb the following rock layers are present: Washing Ledge ( dolomite), Maple Ledge ( also dolomite), Cattle Ledge, Grey Ledge, Blackstone ( an oil shale) and the Whitestone band, which is composed mainly of coccolith. Layering is inclined at about 10 to 20 degree to the west.

Due to the fact that the harder limestone and sandstones are underlain by an unstable, mainly argillaceous rocks, the cliffs are prone to landslides.