Babbacombe, South Devon (12. Junction between Babbacombe Beach and Oddicome Beach)

You should be able to see a prominent flat area or ‘shelf’ and a top section beyond that is set right back. You can see that the cliffs are almost vertical here and you should also be able to glimpse a whitish rock on the top part. This is the other rock type that we saw earlier – Devonian Limestone. You are looking at some of the highest cliffs in Britain – which are some 300 feet at their highest point on Babbacombe Downs above us. At this lower level we are standing on the black shale. These rocks also hide a secret which some landscape detective work managed to discover. Both the black shale and white limestone contain lots of fossils but when geologists carried out work to establish when they were formed, the evidence didn’t seem to add up. What geologists found was that the fossils in the black shales where we are standing at the bottom of the cliff were much younger than those in the white limestone at the top of the cliff. Normally you would expect to find younger rock at the top. So what has happened here? The cliffs are upside down! They concluded that the massive earth movements that raised these rocks from the ocean up into mountains must have also folded them over in such a way that they were inverted. Today it is possible to detect the same type of situation in high mountains like the Alps. Directions to Stop 13 Go down the steep steps towards the sea. At the bottom turn left. Stop after about 25 metres where there is a small waterfall on the left side.