This photograph is taken from a small promontory looking back over the bay at Hartland Quay, North Devon, UK. The cliffs, normally a grey slate colour, were almost flame red from the evening sunset. This was a tranquil place - when the photo was taken.
These cliffs hide the strength of the incredible, almost fantastical powers of the earth. In a time gone by, 300 million years ago, this part of England was undergoing a huge upheaval. Earthquakes and volcanoes actively troubled the landscape, torturing it with the pressures and strains of huge movements and landscape changes.
You can see the result of the upheaval in the rocks. There are two sharp, upside down ' V ' shapes showing. They have a line through them traveling up the cliff. These rocks were once sediments laid down, flat, on a sea bed. The upheaval that folded the rocks was in a time before the dinosaurs. It was a time of swampy forests, and steamy temperatures - the Carboiferous period of Earths history. These rocks were folded and thrust over one another. The line through the centre of the V is where the rocks cracked and slipped along the crack. The movements along these lines would have caused earthqukes like the one that destroyed San Francisco in 1906 (see: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/1906/18april/index.php).
Photographer, writer, teacher :: Live honestly. Progress through knowledge. Achieve by teaching. Communicate in writing. Speak in pictures. Every day, improve the world a little...
![Madagascar hissing cockroach [3] - head](https://media.365project.org/1/2146812_aqrsuvxy12_sq.jpg "Madagascar hissing cockroach [3] - head")
