It is difficult to imagine geologists being excitable people. But Anglesey has a strange effect on even the most studious of these welcome visitors.
For rock detectives, our island, the largest in England and Wales, has some of the most fascinating and revealing rock formations in Europe, if not the world.
It is little wonder that Anglesey is designated a Geopark – in other words an area of unique interest to those fascinated by the formation of the world we have inherited.
Anglesey is compact, and has it all, fascinating generations of geologists and generating great debate. Parts of Anglesey reveal the whole story of our planet’s evolution, back to 680 million years ago.
The violent Pre Cambrian deposits are here, when huge landslides swept into the oceans. Some 150 million years later, sedimentary deposits were being exhaled by “black smokers” at the bottom of the sea (at that time separating England and Wales from Scotland. Those deposits are now to be found mineralised on Parys Mountain, near Amlwch.
Almost as if it were yesterday, Llanddwyn Island reveals evidence of raised beaches, part of the coastline 8,000 years ago, when sea levels were that much higher than now. Ironic isn’t it, at a time when we are being warned of rising sea levels?