MINEHEAD HARRIERS

Local Interests

PORLOCK BAY:

Porlock Bay is on the Bristol Channel, between Hurlestone Point and Porlock Weir in Somerset, England.

The coastline includes shingle ridges, saltmarshes and a submerged forest. In 1052 the Saxon king, Harold, landed at Porlock Bay from Ireland, and burnt the town before marching on London.

Much of the coastline is under the care of the National Trust, and the coastline forms part of the South West Coast Path.

Porlock Ridge and Saltmarsh is a 4-kilometre biological Site of Special Scientific Interest notified for its nationally important active coastal geomorphological features. The type of geomorphological development seen at Porlock has been noted for coastal shingle systems elsewhere (e.g. west coast of Newfoundland, Canada). Porlock provides the only fully documented example of a nationally important coastal geomorphological system which has undergone catastrophic failure and subsequent evolution following sediment inhibition.

At Bossington is a shingle beach, through which flows the River Horner, rising sea levels in the 1990s caused the creation of salt marshes and lagoons developed in the area behind the boulder bank. It demonstrates variations in the rate of relative sea-level rise providing a long-term control on longshore sediment supply, which in turn has controlled gravel barrier beach dynamics.