The Amazing Geology of Hartland Quay

After a full day of exploring, our final destination took us to the beautiful Devon coastline where the Hartland Quay Hotel is situated.

The hotel itself is nothing overly fancy, having originally been used as a malthouse, stables, and cottages for the workers. It’s now quite a decent place to rest for 2 nights and get a bit to eat but we suspect it is the views from the hotel that makes it so popular.

We dined in the popular hotel bar, the Wreckers Retreat. The bar features memorabilia charting the history of Hartland Quay, the many films and TV shows it’s been featured in (like Disney’s Treasure Island!) as well as details of the shipwrecks in the area over the centuries. We love historically themed restaurants and enjoyed our meals here.

The cliffs below feature a folded sequence of shales and sandstones that was deposited approximately 320 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. Plate tectonics caused the collision of two super continents, the Laurasia and the Pangaea, with Hartland Quay in the middle. As these two mega-continents collided, the rocks at Hartland Quay buckled and folded, producing the chevron shaped folds exposed in the cliffs today. Erosion caused the tops of the cliffs to become flat.

We watched the sunset both evenings we stayed at the hotel and both evenings did not disappoint!