Bude fossils and fossil collecting
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 From the A39, take the A3073 into Bude, follow signs into the centre of town taking you down Bencoolen Road, then The Strand, past the Carriers Inn, and along Granville Terrace which runs along side the river.
At the end of the road, is a large car park. There is a bus stop nearby with frequent buses.
At the top of the car park is a round white hut, that's the Lifeboats shop. From here, hop over the sand dune and that's it, immediately you can start collecting. You can walk both South and North from here.
GRID REF: 50.83029°N, 4.54995°W
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Very Good Access
An excellent car park near to other amenities. Easy access to the beach and just a short walk until you can start finding fossils. |
Cliffs, Foreshore
Fossils can be seen in the wave cut platforms along the beach both North and South of the bay, fossils can also be found in the shale layer near the swimming pool. |
SSSI
This site is an SSSI, therefore please do not Hammer the Bedrock, but photograph any fossils. You may collect from the loose material. |
ommon sense when collecting at all locations should be taken and knowledge of tide times should always be noted. The tide can easily cut you off and the cliffs can be dangerious. Please keep away from the base of the cliff at all times. The foreshore is readily accessible for about 3-5 hours before and after spring low tides. |
Bude
Tide Times
UK Tidal data is owned by Crown Copyright, and therefore sadly we are not allowed to display tide times without paying expensive annual contracts. However we sell them via our store, including FREE POSTAGE
Click here to buy a tide table
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| Last updated: |
2010 |
| last visited: |
2010 |
| Written by: |
Flavia Faedo |
 
Most fossils can be seen easily with the naked eye, you can also take some lovely photos of the fossils in cross-section within the wave cut platform, so don't forget your camera! If you plan to collect from the thin shale layer, you will need a pick and field lense.
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Other Locations similar to Bude
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Bude is an excellent location for corals, other similar locations for Carboniferous Corals are;Parkhouse Hill, Castleton, Portishead, Weston-Super-Mare in Avon. In Derbyshire, you can find corals from Monsal Dale. From Wales, Carboniferous Corals can be found at Lydstep Headland, West Angle Bay, Caim, Halkyn, Great Ormes Head, Red Wharf Bay, Prestatyn, Llangollen, and Manorbier Bay.
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Most fossils can be seen in the rocks by looking in the wave-cut platforms along the beach. Cross-sections of corals and crinoids can be seen, but, you should not collected these. They are protected by SSSI and also, almost impossible to extract. Instead, take photos!
From the car-park, walk along the beach towards Saturday Pit (the swimming pool). Here, the cliffs are sandstones. Climb the steps of the swimming pool (please take care if you have children), and in the cliff at the far end of the pool is the Bude Fish Bed. This is a black shale, 14 feet thick. To examine this layer, you need to walk along the platform in front of the retaining wall and around the rocky ledge. 5 feet above the base of the shale, you will find some clay siderite nodules which are up to 6" thick. These nodules contain palaeoniscids of Cornuboniscus budensis and Elonichthys, an acanthodian, Acanthodes Wardi and the crustacean Crangopsis huxleyi.The bed is also full of fish remains.
This bed can be found as far as Maer Low Cliff, where you can also find plant remains in the same nodules.
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Carboniferous, 310mya |
The Carboniferous rocks of Bude are of the 'Upper Carboniferous Bude Sandstones' which are exposed in the cliffs between Bude Haven and Earthquake.
This is part of the Bude Formation which is Langsettian (Westphalian A) to Bolsovian (Westphalian C) age. These beds consist of grey thick-bedded, somewhat argillaceous and silty sandstones, in laterally discontinuous internally massive beds 1-5m thick and commonly amalgamated into units up to 10m thick.
When weathered the sandstones become buff and friable. Very thick beds of slumped and destratified strata are also present. Grey mudstones occur as interbeds up to 1m thick but locally packets of darker mudstone up to 20m thick with thin ironstone beds and bundles of thin sandstones are present, especially in the upper part of the Formation. Five named beds of black sulphurous "shales" with goniatite-bearing calcareous nodules occur within the Formation. Thin units of thin- to medium-bedded siltstones with Xithosurid trails are also present. . ...[more]
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Stone Tumblers |
Microscopes |
Geological Supplies |
If you are interested in fossil collecting, then you may also be interested in a stone tumbler (Lapidary). You can polish stones and rocks from the beach which
will look fantastic polished using a stone tumbler.
You can polish rough rock and beach glass whilst collecting fossils, on those days where you come back empty handed.
These are all high quality machines to give a professional finish to your samples. They can even be used for amber and fossils. |
At most locations, you can find microfossils. You only need a small sample of the sand. You then need to wash it in water and sieve using a test sieve. Once the sand is processed, you can then view the contents using a microscope.
We have a wide range of microscopes for sale, you will need a Stereomicroscope for viewing microfossils. The best one we sell is the IMXZ, but a basic microscope will be fine. Once you have found microfossils, you will need to store these microfossils.
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UKGE, the owners of UK Fossils, are your market leader for Geological Supplies and Geology Equipment. Suppling Retail, Education and Trade in the UK, Europe and beyond.
We sell a wide range of geological hammer and geological picks as well as fossil tools, starter packs and geological chisels.
UKGE is your geological superstore, selling a wide range of field equipment, rocks, minerals, fossils, geological and even microscopy! |
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