Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
FIG
101.
Looking northeastwards across Ladram Bay (Fig. 99,
a3
) towards Sidmouth,
showing the gently sloping layers of Triassic age in the New Red Sandstone. (Copyright
Dae Sasitorn & Adrian Warren/www.lastrefuge.co.uk)
To the west of Budleigh Salterton (
a5
) are cliff exposures, including the Budleigh
Salterton Pebble Beds, which are evidence for a Triassic episode of transport of un-
usually coarse-grained gravels in very vigorous floods. The material forming many of
these pebbles seems to have been carried by the rivers from source areas similar to
those presently exposed in Brittany in northwest France, which were also part of the
Variscan mountain belt.
Landscape B: The Somerset Levels and Moors and the Mid-Somerset Hills
The Somerset Levels and Moors are low and very flat fingers of land that extend south-
eastwards from the coast of the Bristol Channel. Although the whole area is commonly
known as the Somerset Levels, more precisely the Levels are the coastal areas under-
lain by clay, while the inland peat areas are called the Moors. Low ridges and isolated
hills of higher ground, such as the Polden Hills (
b1
) and Glastonbury Tor (
b2
), extend
into the Levels. Further north, Landscape B extends into Area 8 in the direction of the
Mendip hills.
Before the concerted drainage efforts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the Levels and Moors were wetland areas frequently flooded by the rivers or the sea.
