Conglomerate at Gravel Bay: close-up view 2

Freshwater West, Gravel Bay and East Pickard Bay

Another close-up view of a conglomerate in the Freshwater East Formation (note name) at Gravel Bay, situated at the northern end of the large Freshwater West bay in south Pembrokeshire. The view is closely adjacent to the previous photo but without the lens cap for scale, as I didn't want it to distract from the lovely textures in this rock.

The vertical dimension of the photo is about 40 cm.

The Freshwater East Formation marks the beginning of 'Old Red Sandstone' type of sediments, formerly believed to be at the base of the Devonian, but now assigned to the uppermost Silurian. The pebbles and cobbles in the conglomerates mostly consist of white vein quartz and quartzite, grey sandstones and darker sitstones. These were depositied in an alluvial fan settting on a shallow floodplain in increasingly arid conditions.