Chesil Beach

Chesil Beach, a remarkable shingle bank, about fifteen miles long, and from 170 to 200 yards wide, between Burton Bradstock and Portland in Dorsetshire. Its eastern half is separated from the shore by a channel known as the Fleet. The pebbles consist of flint, chert, granite, Budleigh Salterton quartzite, pebbles, and other materials all derived from the west, and they increase markedly in size eastward. It seems to have originated as an ordinary shingle beach, the Isle of Portland causing it, by acting as a gigantic natural groyne; to have deflected several small streams eastwards, as do other shingle beaches at the mouths of the Exe and the Christchurch Avon, for instance; and to have become separated from the mainland by these streams swollen by tidal action and wearing back the low oolite cliffs.