Читать книгу The Cotswold Way. NATIONAL TRAIL Two-way trail guide - Chipping Campden to Bath онлайн

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To read more about the Cotswolds see the list of recommended books in Appendix C.

Geology

About 180 million years ago, the region now known as the Cotswolds was covered by a warm, shallow sea. On its bed settled the shells of tiny creatures along with sediments of sand and clay. Over untold millennia these sediments were compressed into the oolitic limestone that was pushed up to form the very backbone of the land, and which provided the stone that has since been used for the construction of countless lovely cottages, manor houses and churches, not to mention the long miles of drystone walling seen almost everywhere.

The Cotswold mass has an eastward tilt, with the sharp face of the escarpment to west and north, and the limestone resting on several thicknesses of soft Lias clays. Thanks to that tilt, natural weathering processes are aided in their slow but steady destruction of the whole area: streams are constantly weakening the scarp slope, the clays slip and overlying rock crumbles without its former support. Thus the scarp has become a corrugation of bays and projecting prows, similar to a coastline, but without the tides of an ocean lapping at its base. Yet even without the wash of tides the scarp is being worn away and pushed further east and south. ‘Outliers’ such as Cam Long Down near Dursley, Bredon Hill near Evesham, and Dundry Hill to the south of Bristol, provide evidence of the former position of the Cotswold scarp and suggest that the wolds once spread throughout the Severn Vale.