Qualla: Porth Nanven https://qualla.com/porth-nanven en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:10 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/porth-nanven-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Porth Nanven https://qualla.com/porth-nanven Porth Nanven: Introduction https://qualla.com/porth-nanven/ Photo credit Tom Corser, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk. Stand on the beach at Porth Nanven at low tide and look back at the cliff. About twenty feet up, you will see a band of rounded grey boulders embedded in the rock face, as if someone had cemented them in place. They are not in place. They are an ancient beach, suspended in mid-air, waiting for the next storm to bring them down. The sea that rounded them is gone - this stretch of ocean was much higher 120,000 years ago, when those cobbles were tumbling in the surf - but their successors are still on the sand at your feet, the work of a different Atlantic on different cliffs. Geologists call this kind of fossilised shoreline a raised beach. The local press calls Porth Nanven "Dinosaur Egg Beach."

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Image: Tom Corser | CC BY-SA 2.0 uk

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/porth-nanven-wp/gbgv-porth-nanven-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Porth Nanven: The Cove https://qualla.com/porth-nanven/ Photo credit Tom Corser, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk. Porth Nanven, also known as Cot Valley and occasionally as Penanwell, lies half a mile west of St Just in the far west of Cornwall. The Cot Valley itself is a narrow gulley running down from the high Penwith plateau to the sea, with a stream tumbling alongside the road. The valle...

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Image: Tom Corser | CC BY-SA 2.0 uk

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/porth-nanven-wp/gbgv-porth-nanven-the-cove.mp3 0:06 2 full Porth Nanven: Dinosaur Eggs https://qualla.com/porth-nanven/ Photo credit Tom Corser, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk. The beach is covered, at all states of tide, in ovoid boulders. They are not dinosaur eggs - that name belongs to a piece of journalistic affection - and they are not freshly rounded by the present-day sea. They range in size from a hen's egg to a metre or more in length, and the...

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Image: Tom Corser | CC BY-SA 2.0 uk

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/porth-nanven-wp/gbgv-porth-nanven-dinosaur-eggs.mp3 0:06 3 full Porth Nanven: An Older Sea https://qualla.com/porth-nanven/ Photo credit Tom Corser, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk. Around 120,000 years ago, during the warm Eemian interglacial, sea levels on this coast stood several metres higher than they do today. Atlantic surf was hammering the cliffs at Porth Nanven roughly where a goat path now runs, and the cobble beach of that shoreline lay where the ...

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Image: Tom Corser | CC BY-SA 2.0 uk

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/porth-nanven-wp/gbgv-porth-nanven-an-older-sea.mp3 0:06 4 full Porth Nanven: The Living Beach https://qualla.com/porth-nanven/ Photo credit Rod Allday, CC BY-SA 2.0. The cobbles on the modern beach are the descendants of the cliff boulders. As the cliff erodes, the old cobbles fall out and join the surf at the bottom; the present-day Atlantic rolls them around for another few thousand years and they become indistinguishable from the boulders ...

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Image: Rod Allday | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/porth-nanven-wp/gbgv-porth-nanven-the-living-beach.mp3 0:06 5 full Porth Nanven: Sound of the Atlantic https://qualla.com/porth-nanven/ Photo credit Tom Corser, CC BY-SA 2.0 uk. Most beaches sound like surf. Porth Nanven sounds like surf plus a deeper, drier note - the boulders moving against each other as each wave runs back, a slow rattle as the cobbles settle into new positions. In a winter storm the sound becomes a roar; thousand-kilogram rocks lift ...

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Image: Tom Corser | CC BY-SA 2.0 uk

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/porth-nanven-wp/gbgv-porth-nanven-sound-of-the-atlantic.mp3 0:06 6 full