Ruggedly beautiful, Northcott is a rocky cove, but a sandy beach emerges when the tide is out. At low tide, the wreck of the SS Belem is revealed. Wrecked in November 1917, the propeller shaft was salvaged and used as a metal support for Barrel Rock at the end of Bude Breakwater! Children will delight in the little stream crossing the beach and the rock pools, while surfers will enjoy the waves created by rocky reefs. This National Trust beach has a small car park adjacent to it with an “honesty” box for contributions. There are no toilet facilities. Lifeguard cover is provided from 4th July until 6th September. No dog ban applies.
The distinctive rocks known as the 'Bude Formation', covering much of north Devon and northernmost Cornwall, are best exposed in the magnificent cliffs. The cliffs show alternating beds of sandstone and dark shale, deformed into zigzag folds; the upfolds are called 'anticlines'; downfolds are 'synclines'.
The Bude Formation has few fossils and no igneous rocks. The scarce fossils, plus well-dated rocks just below and above, tell geologists that the Bude Formation was deposited about 300 million years ago, in the 'Carboniferous period', long before dinosaurs or mammals existed.
The Bude Formation became folded (literally squeezed) only 5-10 million years after it was deposited, when Africa and Europe, riding on separate plates, collided, near the very end of 'Carboniferous time'. This collision folded and uplifted the sediments of the Cornubian Basin, forming a mountain chain that ran east-west across Cornwall and Devon. In this way, a subsiding basin turned into an uplifting mountain range. The uplift led to erosion, mainly by rain and rivers, of the younger deposits off the top of the Bude Formation, exposing it as we see it today. In other words, the Bude Formation was once in the core of a mountain range that has since been almost entirely eroded away!
Among the many amazing features on Northcott Beach you will find a ‘fold’ where rocks of lower position are pushed up by compression.
To log this cache
- Find the Northcott Mouth Fold (see photo)
- Estimate the height of the foremost structure (beach to grass)
- In what direction does the fold appear to be heading?
- Estimate the number of layers of rock in the fold?