Wild Flowers, Sea Arches and Lighthouses: 300 million years in three miles at Whitburn

Being unable to travel long distances other than for essential reasons during lockdown has seen our physical worlds shrink, not only in adventure travel terms but also in daily living, including those used to travelling distances for working purposes or even just a short commute into work from home or travelling to see friends and family. As someone who enjoys adventure travel, my physical world, not just in relation to my recent adventures but also regarding the travel plans I had for 2020 including one adventure that has been postponed to 2021 and another, which at the time of writing is subject to review as to whether it can go ahead, has shrunk hugely. Spending more at home during lockdown though that has enabled me to revisit a place where a geological field trip played a part in inspiring me to travel, South Tyneside’s Whitburn Coastal Park.

Sea Arch, Whitburn

Often, the wanderlust in us constantly sets our adventure horizons to far flung places with other-worldly looking landscapes which almost look like visiting another planet being so appealing. Yet we might not have to travel so far physically to see traces of the many different worlds our planet has been throughout its estimated four-and-a-half-billion year history. Only a three mile walk from where I live, Whitburn Coastal Park features some of the world’s only examples of marine geology formed during the Permian period around three hundred million years ago. Observing the tide coming in and going out, the shapes of the rocks and boulders washed up on the shore and the caves and sea arches dotted along the cliffs, while bringing the view into where walking and standing in the present, the journeys that the sea, the tide and the coast have brought become very apparent.

Jackie's Beach, Whitburn

Millions of years of tidal erosion has shaped some very remarkable features along Whitburn’s coastal path, enabled by the coast’s geological make up. A ridge of magnesium limestone straddles the coast at Whitburn which stretches over two hundred miles to Nottinghamshire. A natural fertiliser, limestone enables a range of flora to align the cliffs and beaches. My personal favourite spot along Whitburn’s coast is Jackie’s Beach, a remarkable raised beach whose raised level features an expansive covering of coastal grass and some beautiful wild flowers. A peaceful and often secluded location, it can easily feel like a world away from being less than three miles from one’s doorstep!

The wildflowers that can be seen on Jackie’s Beach, usually during the warmer months of June and July are a reminder not just of the continual renewals brought about by the seasons but also of the journeys that the British Isles have brought as a result of gradual and continual shifting of the continents, revealing how much closer that archipelago we know as the British Isles once was to the equator. Within the many pebbles shaped and deposited the every renewing tidal drift also bring back glimpses of what the world was like further back another fifty million years before the Permian period from where the caves and sea arches originate, in the form of fossils which can still be found along the coast if one is lucky. Fossilised timber occasionally brought ashore by the tide indicates the remains of a dense prehistoric swamp forest buried beneath the coast.

Wildflowers on Jackie's Beach

Being such a peaceful and often secluded place, Jackie’s Beach is a great spot to practice mindfulness both sitting and walking. While tuning into the present, noticing one’s immediate surroundings seeing remains and effects of different geological periods and their continually ongoing nature from the sight and sound of the tide tune the experience into a continual now. Just how closely interconnected geological timescales as well as the planets seas, oceans islands and continents are is apparent in how visible their effects are in a sensory way.

Souter Lighthouse and Foghorn

While the Carbonibferous and Permian periods have left their mark along Whitburn’s coast, with the coast almost being a visual geological timetable, humankind has also ‘written’ some of its own history along the coast, including how humankind has made use of its home planet’s geological legacies including from a legacy of the swamp forest that once occupied the area became fossilized as, which as well as being providing a local livelihood but would also play a major part in the Industrial Revolution, coal. Remains of Whitburn Colliery’s operations (which operated until its closer in 1968) can also be seen along the coast as well as old limestone quarries which provided the building materials to build local fishermen's cottages. Further up from Jackie’s Beach, a piece of history emerges which this fuel powered, the world’s first purpose-built lighthouse lit by electricity, Souter Lighthouse, now owned by the National Trust.

As well habitats for a variety of wildlife and sights often pleasing to the human eye, geological journeys also bring many mysteries waiting to be solved. Within rock shapes are some formations unique to the region. Further down the coast towards Seaburn, some very unique cannonball-shaped rocks and concretions whose formation geologists still aren’t sure about, but they contain calcite and a yellow dolomite. The process though probably started back to when the British Isles were part of the prehistoric super-continent Pangea and were at a low-lying part below sea level only ten degrees north or the equator, with the nearby sea filling the area as Pangea gradually drifted gradually starting to resemble the world map as we know it today. These unique-shaped rocks found at Seaburn are probably the result of millions of years of complex chemical reactions together with constant tidal erosion.

'Cannonballs' at Seaburn

With lockdown gradually easing in the UK, albeit controversial, being able to visit parks, beaches and open spaces as long as the two meter social distancing rule is observed, though the physical geographical scope of permitted leisure travel remains restricted, the mental scope of taking travelling somewhere nearer home may expand, perhaps courtesy of how our outlook on life may have changed during such unprecedented times.  

Chances are that there are people reading this who, like me, had travel plans for 2020 which have either been cancelled, postponed until 2021 or if planned for late 2020 and even early 2021 are uncertain as to whether they will go ahead. Though we travelling far geographically is largely impractical at present, providing we take appropriate precautions including social distancing, Covid-19 living circumstances can present us with an opportunity to open up to what we overlook closer to us, as well as getting in touch with ourselves and understanding our place on Earth and indeed in the universe just through opening up to the continual now of millions of years within just a few miles.

Post dedicated to my former Geography and Geology teacher Mr Whan, one of my inspirations for adventure whom I thought was 'the greatest teacher in the history of the world'! For more information about Whitburn Coastal Park and the surrounding area, click here.