Worbarrow Bay is a large broad and shallow bay just to the east of Lulworth Cove

Lulworth Cove

Lulworth Cove is a cove near the village of West Lulworth, on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site in Dorset, southern England. The cove is one of the world's finest examples of such a landform, and is a tourist location with over 1 million visitors a year...

 on the Isle of Purbeck

Isle of Purbeck

The Isle of Purbeck, not a true island but a peninsula, is in the county of Dorset, England. It is bordered by the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well...

, Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Location

Worbarrow Bay is located about six kilometres south of Wareham

Wareham, Dorset

Wareham is an historic market town and, under the name Wareham Town, a civil parish, in the English county of Dorset. The town is situated on the River Frome eight miles southwest of Poole.-Situation and geography:...

 and about 16 kilometres west of Swanage

Swanage

Swanage is a coastal town and civil parish in the south east of Dorset, England. It is situated at the eastern end of the Isle of Purbeck, approximately 10 km south of Poole and 40 km east of Dorchester. The parish has a population of 10,124 . Nearby are Ballard Down and Old Harry Rocks,...

. At the eastern end of the Bay is a promontory known as Worbarrow Tout

Worbarrow Tout

Worbarrow Tout is a promontory at the eastern end of Worbarrow Bay on Isle of Purbeck in Dorset on the south coast of England.- Location :Worbarrow Bay and Worbarrow Tout are located about six kilometres south of Wareham und about 16 kilometres west of Swanage. Worbarrow Bay lies between Kimmeridge...

. The northwest end of the bay is known as Cow Corner

Cow Corner

Known as Cow Corner is the north-western end of Worbarrow Bay, a small secluded bay on the south coast of the Isle of Purbeck, in Dorset England.- Location :...

. Towering over Worbarrow Bay to the north is Flower's Barrow

Flower's Barrow

Flower’s Barrow is an Iron Age hillfort, built over 2500 years ago, above Worbarrow Bay in Dorset on the south coast of England.- Location :Flower’s Barrow is located about 16 kilometres from Swanage and about six kilometres south of Wareham....

 ridge, which due to coastal erosion is gradually falling into the sea. Flower’s Barrow forms the western end of the ridge which runs all the way to Ballard Point, north of Swanage.

Worbarrow Bay is only accessible when the Lulworth Military Range

Lulworth Military Range

Lulworth Military Range is a military firing range located between Wareham and Lulworth in Dorset, England. It is owned by the Ministry of Defence and is part of the Armoured Fighting Vehicles Gunnery School....

 is open to the public. It can be reached by a 1.4 kilometre (0.869921831309729 mi) walk down an easy track alongside Tyneham Gwyle, from the car park alongside the ghost village

Ghost town

A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...

 of Tyneham

Tyneham

Tyneham is a ghost village in south Dorset, England, near Lulworth on the Isle of Purbeck. It remains a civil parish.-Location:The village is situated northeast of Worbarrow Bay on the Jurassic Coast, about south of Wareham and about west of Swanage. It is part of the Lulworth Estate. Tyneham is...

. There is a museum within the ruins of the village.

Jurassic Coast

The Jurassic Coast

Jurassic Coast

The Jurassic Coast is a World Heritage Site on the English Channel coast of southern England. The site stretches from Orcombe Point near Exmouth in East Devon to Old Harry Rocks near Swanage in East Dorset, a distance of ....

, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...

, stretches over a distance of 153 kilometres (95 mi), from Orcombe Point

Orcombe Point

Orcombe Point is a coastal feature near Exmouth, Devon, on the south coast of England. It lies about south of the city of Exeter, southeast of Exmouth town centre and about southwest of Sidmouth....

 near Exmouth

Exmouth, Devon

Exmouth is a port town, civil parish and seaside resort in East Devon, England, sited on the east bank of the mouth of the River Exe. In 2001, it had a population of 32,972.-History:...

, in the west, to Old Harry Rocks

Old Harry Rocks

The Old Harry Rocks are two chalk sea stacks located at Handfast Point, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, southern England.- Location :Old Harry Rocks lie directly east of Studland, about 4 kilometres northeast of Swanage, and about 10 kilometres south of the large towns of Poole and...

 on the Isle of Purbeck

Isle of Purbeck

The Isle of Purbeck, not a true island but a peninsula, is in the county of Dorset, England. It is bordered by the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well...

 in the east.

The coastal exposures along the coastline provide a continuous sequence of Triassic

Triassic

The Triassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about 250 to 200 Mya . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic. Both the start and end of the Triassic are marked by major extinction events...

, Jurassic

Jurassic

The Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about Mya to  Mya, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the age of reptiles. The start of the period is marked by...

 and Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...

 rock formations spanning approximately 185 million years of the Earths history. The rocks dip gently to the east. Due to this tilting and erosion the oldest exposed rocks are found in the west. The younger Cretaceous rocks form the cliffs in the east. Worbarrow Bay is part of the Jurassic Coast.

• for further sites see: List of places on the Jurassic Coast

Geology

The geology of Worbarrow Bay and Mupe Bay

Mupe Bay

Mupe Bay is a bay with shingle beach to the east of Lulworth Cove in Dorset, England, and is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site.It exposes a sequence of Cretaceous rocks from the Bindon Hill Chalk in the north through the Wealden Beds to the Purbeck Beds in the south at Mupe Rocks.Mupe...

 are very similar and they almost mirror each other. The mirror being the point where the two bays meet, the Arish Mell Gap.

The Cliffs behind Worbarrow Bay expose a sequence of Cretaceous rocks. These range from the Chalk

Chalk

Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores....

s at the northwest end of the bay, at Cow Corner, that are between 85 to 145 million years old, through to the hard stone outcrop in the east. The sediments that form the peninsula are Portland limestone

Portland stone

Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries consist of beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building stone throughout the British Isles, notably in major...

s, which is 150 million year old, and the Purbeck Beds, 147 million year old.

The Cliffs and the Tout have distinctive angular layers of rock that visibly demonstrate the complex sedimentary folding that affected this area some 30 million years ago. The foldings were caused by tectonic pressures as the African and European continents collided. At that time the cliff sediments were twisted horizontally and that is why the younger Chalks are found towards the rear of the bay and the older sediments face the sea at the front of the bay.

Fossil Zone

The localities along the Jurassic Coast include a large range of important fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

 zones. The Purbeck lagoonal limestones and the shales that are exposed in the cliffs of Worbarrow Tout contain dinosaur footprints and have abundant brackish water bivalves

Bivalvia

Bivalvia is a taxonomic class of marine and freshwater molluscs. This class includes clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, and many other families of molluscs that have two hinged shells...

, gastropods

Gastropoda

The Gastropoda or gastropods, more commonly known as snails and slugs, are a large taxonomic class within the phylum Mollusca. The class Gastropoda includes snails and slugs of all kinds and all sizes from microscopic to quite large...

 and ostracod

Ostracod

Ostracoda is a class of the Crustacea, sometimes known as the seed shrimp because of their appearance. Some 65,000 species have been identified, grouped into several orders....

s.