Stormy waves meet the cliffs at West Bay, Dorset

I came to visit Patrick H. in Dorset for a couple of nights, staying under the thatch in his old cottage. We had quite a late night, and the new day was very overcast and windy. I suggested a drive of a about ten miles over the hills to the coast at a small harbour called West Bay, close to Bridport.

Pat made egg mayonnaise sandwiches and a flask of tea before we set off under the grey sky. I love Dorset and particularly this area west of Dorchester where the hills are high and valleys are deep. Patrick took me on a delightful detour down remote single track roads to a hamlet called Little Bredy to see the source of the river which flows through Bridport and meets the sea at West Bay.

When we arrived the sky was nearly black and the wind was still blowing very hard in from the direction of France to the south. The rain had ceased so we ventured onto the small pier which provides protection for boats entering the harbour. I took some pictures of various parts of the scene but noticed that the light was brightening out at sea.

We sat in a wooden wind shelter on the pier to eat our sandwiches, drink tea and chat. By the time we'd finished the dark clouds were still overhead though retreating inland, but the low afternoon sun was shining from under the cloud cover. When I ventured out into the wind again the cliffs above the beach were back to their normal beautiful yellow colour. I don't know their name but they became well known as the scene of the crime in a a very well liked recent dram series called 'Broadchurch'. I seem to remember various bits of action set on the pier we stood on.

I love to see and feel the windy conditions of storms at the seaside. I managed to keep out of most of the spray to take the pictures but did get soaked at one point and my lens became rather smeared with the salt.

On the way home we went back to see the beach at the far eastern end of these first cliffs at Hive Beach, where we walked over the sand and down to the water's edge.

Some notes about the area:
West Bay is sited on deposits of river alluvium that indicate a former estuary. There are beaches and cliffs on either side of the harbour. The beaches were previously of a similar size – in terms of their seaward extent – but now East Beach is considerably larger, due to accumulation of finer sediment. East Beach is also designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and forms one end of Chesil Beach, a barrier beach which extends southeast for 18 miles (29 km) toward the Isle of Portland.

The cliffs to the east of the harbour are composed of Bridport Sand Formation and Inferior Oolite, while immediately to the west they are Frome Clay (Upper Fullers Earth) and Forest Marble. The Bridport Sands deposits were laid down in the Toarcian Age toward the end of the Early Jurassic; they are arranged horizontally with clear banding visible alternating between harder and softer material. The cliff's distinctive colour is a result of oxidisation of fine pyrite grains, resulting in limonite. The Frome Clay and Forest Marble of the West Cliff are younger and were formed in the Bathonian Age of the Middle Jurassic. The section of the West Cliff closest to the harbour has been engineered as part of coastal defence management; large protective boulders on the foreshore are backed by a sea wall, promenade and artificial grass-covered slope.