Yesterday I had to deliver a car to a customer in Launceston, so Hay and I decided to make a day of it and call in at Lee Bay on the north Devon coast, a favourite haunt of ours, and take a chance that it would be as deserted as usual, which it was.
We were mooching around a couple of small bays on the north eastern side of the large bay before settling down in one of them for a lie in the sun. I decided to go off an do some fishing on the other side of the main bay and was walking along a concrete pathway when I heard an almighty noise, like a lorry tipping out several tonnes of gravel. I looked over in Hayley's general direction and saw a massive cliff face collapsing into the small bay next to the one Hay was sunbathing in - the very one we'd been scouting not 30 minutes before. I've never seen anything like it in my life. The collapse comprised about 50 tonnes of rock at the very least and enough to kill outright anyone who might have been unlucky enough to be sat under it.
Had it been a weekend, it's likely that at least one or two families with kids would have been sat in that bay, close to - if not directly under - where the rockfall occurred. The site of the rockfall was behind a small cut that can be seen just to the left of the centre of the photo above, which is where one gains access to that bay.
The geology or the area is comprised of very friable morte slates made from compressed mud, which come apart with relative ease and were laid down some 350 mya.
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