Poet's Cove

This small pocket beach faces northwest towards the head of Bedwell Harbor (Medicine Beach).The resort - which is a bit out of synch on an otherwise low key kind of island - climbs up the hill behind the beach. The marina and Customs station (this is a convenient place for boaters to check in when they cross the boundary) extend out into the cove. The resort is closed (well, they allow tourists to wander through) so everything was pretty empty.

AERIAL VIEW

The beach, like many, is a combination of mineral sediment and shell debris. Pocket beaches tend to form in coves, which correspond to valleys in the landscape, and therefore are often fed by small streams. And these streams carry sediment - in this case, both glacial and Cretaceous I suppose - from their watersheds down to the beach. For the sake of geologic accuracy I should point out that the clasts within the Cretaceous Nanaimo Group are presumably much older than that.

The shell on beaches around here is mainly clam shell, washed up from lower on the beach face, and barnacle fragments, washed off rocks on adjacent promontories or the piles that support the docks.

I liked the way the shell had piled up on the upper beach - right against the bulkhead and even up and over it (I wondered if some of this had been spread over the rockery as a landscaping touch, but I think a bulk of it ended up here naturally.)

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