Bay in Wales
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 Morning Sun at Tor Bay |
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Oxwich Bay (Welsh : Bae Oxwich) is a bay on the south of the Gower Peninsula, Wales.
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Oxwich Bay (Welsh : Bae Oxwich) is a bay on the south of the Gower Peninsula, Wales.
Its landscape features sand dunes, salt marshes and woodland. Oxwich Bay includes a 2+1⁄2-mile (4 km) long sandy beach, accessible from the village of Oxwich. It is a popular spot for swimming and watersports including diving, sailing, water skiing and windsurfing. [1] There is a public footpath along the cliffs from Oxwich Bay, around Oxwich Point, and to Port Eynon Bay. Buses run every couple of hours between Oxwich and Port Eynon. [2]
A wetland site at the rear of the dunes forms Oxwich Burrows National Nature Reserve. [3] The dunes are crossed by a small stream called Nicholaston Pill. [4] The bay ends at the eastern end with the cliffs of High Tor; but at low tide, a continuous sandy beach connects with Three Cliffs Bay beyond. [5] Within the nature reserve there are rare plants such as the dune gentian and the round-leafed wintergreen, insects such as the small blue, beachcomber beetle and the hairy dragonfly while the wetlands are important for birds, a bird hide is located at Whitestones which is accessed by a boardwalk through the wetlands. The birds present include water rail, little grebe and wildfowl, as well as the occasional wintering great bittern. [3]
Submarine cables leave the mainland of Britain from Oxwich. These include the SOLAS cable across the Irish Sea, and the TAT-11 and Gemini North transatlantic telephone cables. These latter two do not terminate here but instead continue on to France (TAT-11) and England (Gemini). [6]
On 1 February 2007, Oxwich beach was named the most beautiful in Britain. [7]
Gower or the Gower Peninsula is in South West Wales and is the most westerly part of the historic county of Glamorgan, Wales. It projects towards the Bristol Channel. In 1956, the majority of Gower became the first area in the United Kingdom to be designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Gower electoral ward is an electoral ward in Britain. It is a ward of the City and County of Swansea, and comprises the western part of the Gower Peninsula. It lies within the UK Parliamentary constituency of Gower.
The Kamay Botany Bay National Park is a heritage-listed protected national park that is located in the eastern part of Botany Bay in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The 456-hectare (1,130-acre) national park is situated approximately 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) south-east of the Sydney central business district, on the northern and southern headlands of Botany Bay. The northern headland is at La Perouse and the southern headland is at Kurnell.
The Bristol Channel is a major inlet in the island of Great Britain, separating South Wales and South West England. It extends from the smaller Severn Estuary of the River Severn to the North Atlantic Ocean. It takes its name from the English city and port of Bristol.
Cefn Sidan is a long sandy beach with dunes, which form the outer edge of the Pembrey Burrows between Burry Port and Kidwelly, facing southwestwards over Carmarthen Bay in South Wales. Cefn Sidan beach is backed by dunes, salt marshes, Pembrey Forest and the Pembrey Country Park.
Three Cliffs Bay, otherwise Three Cliff Bay, is a bay on the south coast of the Gower Peninsula in the City and County of Swansea, Wales. The bay takes its name from the three sea cliffs that jut out into the bay. Pennard Pill, a large stream, flows into the sea in the middle of the bay.
Port Eynon is a village and community within the City and County of Swansea, Wales, on the far south tip of the Gower Peninsula within the designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The A4118 from Swansea city centre terminates here.
The Millennium Coastal Park was originally a project undertaken by Llanelli Borough Council to transform a 12 miles stretch of industrial wasteland on the south Carmarthenshire coast into green parkland. The project was then taken over by Carmarthenshire County Council after the amalgamation of Welsh local authorities and the land was transformed into a landscaped recreational area for the general public. The park is 1000 hectares in area, cost £35 million to develop and in 2002 was awarded a Civic Trust Award. It has extensive views over the Lloughor Estuary to the Gower Peninsula. It includes a cycle track which provides traffic-free cycling and has been described as "one of the finest stretches of the whole National Cycle Network". Another feature is a wave-shaped, grass-covered landform, created from 115,000 cubic metres (4,100,000 cu ft) pulverised fuel ash, a form of "land art".
Caswell Bay, is a beach on the south east of the Gower Peninsula, Swansea, Wales. It is a sandy beach popular with families, holiday makers and surfers, and it regularly achieves Blue Flag status.
Whiteford Sands is a two-mile expanse of beach on the northern side of the Gower Peninsula, south Wales. It is the most northerly beach on Gower and sits on the edge of the Loughor estuary.
TSMV Shanklin was a passenger ferry that operated between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight between 1951 and 1980. Renamed Prince Ivanhoe she went on to become a pleasure cruiser in the Bristol Channel but in 1981 sank off the Welsh coast on her first season.
Whiteford National Nature Reserve includes an expanse of sandy beach, Whiteford Sands, a wildlife rich sand dune system and forest.
Merthyr Mawr Sand Dunes are sand dunes and a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Bridgend, south Wales. The village of Merthyr Mawr is nearby.
Oxwich is a village on the Gower Peninsula, in the city and county of Swansea in south Wales. Oxwich is part of the small community of Penrice which extends from the village of Horton to Oxwich Bay, and as of 2001 recorded a population of 454 inhabitants.
The Gower and Swansea Bay Coast Path (Welsh: Llwybr arfordir Penrhyn Gŵyr a Bae Abertawe is part of the Wales Coast Path, an 1,400-kilometre long-distance walking route around the whole coast of Wales that opened in 2012. The Gower and Swansea Bay stretch is 156 kilometres in length, running along the coast of the Gower Peninsula from Loughor, Swansea to Kenfig Dunes near Port Talbot, South Wales. The number of people using the Wales Coast Path in the Swansea local authority area was 349,333.
Dagestan Nature Reserve is a Russian 'zapovednik' that protects an area of sand dunes and ridges on the northwest coast of the Caspian Sea in the southeast of European Russia. The reserve, a wintering place for migratory birds, is the richest nature reserve in Russia in terms of the number of species - over 300 species have been recorded in the reserve, its buffer zones and subordinate reserves. The reserve is part of several "Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas" (IBAs). The Sarykum sand dune is the highest sand dune in Europe, at 262 m (860 ft). The reserve is situated in the Tarumovsky District of Dagestan.
The geology of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales is central to the area's character and to its appeal to visitors. The peninsula is formed almost entirely from a faulted and folded sequence of Carboniferous rocks though both the earlier Old Red Sandstone and later New Red Sandstone are also present. Gower lay on the southern margin of the last ice sheet and has been a focus of interest for researchers and students in that respect too. Cave development and the use of some for early human occupation is a further significant aspect of the peninsula's scientific and cultural interest.
The coastline of Wales extends from the English border at Chepstow westwards to Pembrokeshire then north to Anglesey and back eastwards to the English border once again near Flint. Its character is determined by multiple factors, including the local geology and geological processes active during and subsequent to the last ice age, its relative exposure to or shelter from waves, tidal variation and the history of human settlement and development which varies considerably from one place to another. The majority of the coast east of Cardiff in the south, and of Llandudno in the north, is flat whilst that to the west is more typically backed by cliffs. The cliffs are a mix of sandstones, shales and limestones, the erosion of which provides material for beach deposits. Of the twenty-two principal areas which deliver local government in Wales, sixteen have a coastline, though that of Powys consists only of a short section of tidal river some distance from the open sea. Its length has been estimated at 1,680 miles (2,700 km).