Whitecliff Bay is a sandy bay near Foreland which is the easternmost point of the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a Counties of England, county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the List of islands of England#Largest islands, largest and List of islands of England#Mo ...

, England, about two miles south-west of Bembridge and just to the north of Culver Down. The bay has a shoreline of around and has a popular sandy

shingle beach A shingle beach (also referred to as rocky beach or pebble beach) is a beach which is armoured with pebbles or small- to medium-sized cobbles (as opposed to fine sand). Typically, the stone composition may grade from characteristic sizes rangi ...

which is over half a mile long. It is a tourist site with three holiday parks in the vicinity of the bay; it has two cafes though minimal facilities. Access is limited and only possible down two steeply sloping concrete tracks. The site is of major geological interest, being part of the Whitecliff Bay And Bembridge Ledges SSSI.

Geology

Whitecliff Bay has nearly identical geology to the lesser known Alum Bay, being a coastal section of the same strata which run east–west across the island. It displays a classic sequence of fossil-bearing

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " ...

beds of soft sands and clays, separated by an

unconformity An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval o ...

from the underlying

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

Chalk Formation forming the headland of Culver Down to its south. Due to geological folding of the Alpine orogeny, the strata in the main section of the Bay are vertical, with younger rocks to the north. In the bay, there are around of well-exposed sands and of late Palaeocene to late

clays which make the site is a good spot for fossil hunting, with an abundance of prehistoric shells, sponges and

molluscs Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

. The bay itself is shallow up to around from shore getting to deep water out.

History

Whitecliff Bay was one of the landing points for the French invasion of the Isle of Wight (1545) where they planned to go on to attack Sandown. The bay gets its name from the chalky cliff on the headland, Culver Down, which rises over at the south-eastern point of the bay.

References

External links

Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park
{{Bays on the Isle of Wight Tourist attractions on the Isle of Wight Bays of the Isle of Wight Geology of the Isle of Wight Bembridge