UKH

On Dorset’s Jurassic coast. It does look massive: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/15/jurassic-coast-cliff-co...
I wondered what the one 60 years ago was. Anybody know?

That part of the coast is always falling down. Burton Bradstock has had big falls in recent years. The recent Seatown one is in an area where you can still see the remains of previous falls; see the drone footage on the BBC, or look at a map to see the obvious signs of previous cliff slumps, leading to a tiered coastal margin.

Not sure where the '60 years ago' fall would have been.

Seems the quote is from a man who has lived there for 60 years and it's the biggest he's seen. 

My first thought - oooh bet there's lots of luverly fossils in them thair (fallen down) cliffs.  

What have I become?

Interested in things other than climbing!

I thought the same

That was my immediate thought too!

 The recent Seatown one is in an area where you can still see the remains of previous falls.

Pah Seatown.  Gets what it deserves.  First place after I was 18 that I couldn't get served in a pub. Walking the coast path, had no ID.

That was 40 years ago....OK I may hold grudges too long....

IIRC, someone was killed by a follow-up fall whilst fossil hunting the last big one at Burton Bradstock.

I'd say 'take a helmet', but I fear they're not really up to the job of protecting you from a cliff landing on you...

This is possibly post of the week

Well, to be fair, there will be a lot of smaller stuff coming down, too, so a helmet would be a good idea...

It's hard to see anything falling on to the debris, since there isn't really anything above it. Still, if you take a helmet at least you'll have something to put anything you find it.

jcm

What is the country's biggest ever rockfall anyway, I wonder?

jcm

Are you okay, John? Some of your recent posts seem... odd.

The cliff face is still there. Where there has been a large separation like this, there is a lot of loose stuff on the face, and that continues to fall for some time after the main fall. Not to mention the unstable debris fan.

Fancy doing some new routing once we have been chipped?

Guaranteed adventure choss fun.

Hey chap, hope you and the family are all good.

So many triggering words in that post haha!  But yeah would be good to get out on something not new routing, or adventure, or choss, or chipped : ) 

Still a bit twitchy after Gurgle Girdle?

Did you see how much I climbed last year?  Put me off for life haha!

Apparently the maps from Hoy a couple of hundred years ago showed a headland where the old man is now. That must have been quite a rock fall!

Obviously that whole section of coast is prone to landslides due to geological setting.

Largest one that I'm aware of is the famous Binden Landslide of Christmas Eve 1839, located between Seaton and Lyme Regis (so to the west of the one linked above).

A section of cliff approximately a mile long and half a mile wide (around 50 acres in area) slide into the sea, and heaved the seabed on the foreshore some 40ft upwards. Also created 'Goat Island' in the middle of the slip, where ground surface had been forced upwards and is relatively flat.

Its probably one of the earliest landslides that was properly studied by geologist (or at least widely written about at the time) and has been looked at numerous times since to determine why/how it happened.  

IIRC, geologically theres a 'angular unconformity' (a previous erosion surface) with a clay layer sat immediately above it, which is in turn overlain by sandstones/limestones, and the whole lot tends to slip along the unconformity, the clay lubricated by percolating groundwater. However, it appears to be very complicated when you get down to the details, and not fully understood even today.

Great video here pulling together what may have happened (if you're interested in the detail, it is very geeky and geology heavy!).

https://www.fossilfestival.co.uk/aiovg_videos/the-great-bindon-landslip-fin...

Thanks - that's a very enjoyable presentation. I watched far more than I intended, although I did skip a few of the more complex sections!

If anyone has any further interest in landslides I was rummaging around the internet and found that the British Geological Survey has a set of case studies that are worth exploring: 

https://www.bgs.ac.uk/geology-projects/landslides/landslide-case-studies/